“SimpleX at its core is designed to be truly distributed without a central server. This provides massive scalability at a low cost, and also makes it virtually impossible to snoop on the network graph,” Poberezkin wrote in a company blog post published in 2022.
SimpleX's policy expressly prohibits “sending illegal communications” and outlines how SimpleX will remove such content if it is discovered. Much of the content that these terrorist groups have shared on Telegram – and are already re-sharing on SimpleX – is considered illegal in Britain, Canada and Europe.
Argentino wrote in his analysis that the discussion about Telegram's move to platforms with better security measures started in June, while in July the discussion about SimpleX as an option took place among some extremist groups. Although it wasn't until September, and Terrorgram's arrests, that the decision to migrate to SimpleX was made, groups are already establishing themselves on the new platform.
“The groups that have migrated are already filling the platform with old material such as Terrorgram manuals and are actively recruiting propagandists, hackers and graphic designers, among other desirable personnel,” the ISD researchers wrote.
However, there are some downsides to the extra security that SimpleX provides, such as the fact that it is not as easy for these groups to network and therefore grow, and that spreading propaganda faces similar restrictions.
“While there is new enthusiasm about the migration, it remains unclear whether the platform will become a central organizing hub,” ISD researchers wrote.
And Poberezkin believes the current limitations of his technology will eventually cause these groups to leave SimpleX.
“SimpleX is a communications network rather than a service or a platform where users can host their own servers, as in OpenWeb, so we didn't know extremists were using it,” Poberezkin said. “We never designed groups to be useful for more than 50 users and we are very surprised to see that they have grown to their current size despite limited usability and performance. We do not think it is technically possible to create a social network of meaningful size in the SimpleX network.”
This story originally appeared on wired.com.
