Most Ukrainians oppose Telegram ban - poll

54% of Ukrainians favor limiting and controlling Telegram rather than banning it completely. Only 9% of Ukrainians  believe that the messenger should be completely banned. This is evidenced by the data of the KIIS poll, UNN reports. 

Details

According to the poll, the vast majority of Ukrainians (71%) recognize that the spread of Russian disinformation and propaganda on social media is a fairly or even very serious threat. At the same time, 33% of them consider this threat to be one of the biggest, while the remaining 38% say that this threat, although serious, is not one of the biggest.

Those who say it is not a significant threat or no threat at all are 23% 

Currently, only 9% of Ukrainians immediately say that Telegram should be banned completely. At the same time, only 26% believe that it should not be controlled in any way.

Instead, the majority of Ukrainians (54%) believe that it should not be banned completely, but that certain restrictions and controls should be introduced, such as blocking certain channels, etc.

It is noted that even among those who consider the threat to be very serious, only 15% are now in favor of a complete ban on Telegram in Ukraine.

Ukrainians who do not currently support a complete ban on Telegram in Ukraine were asked an additional question whether they would support a ban if Telegram owners refused to block certain Telegram channels. Each respondent was offered only one of the types of Telegram channels that Telegram owners refused to block in a hypothetical scenario  . 

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The results showed that if the owners of Telegram  categorically refuse to block channels that spread Russian propaganda and disinformation, 60% of Ukrainians would support a complete ban on Telegram (32% would not).

At the same time, support for the ban is significantly higher (at the level of the vast majority of society) if Telegram owners do not block channels used by the Russian occupiers for communication, as well as if they do not block channels for drug distribution. Thus, if they refuse to block the channels used by the Russian occupiers for communication, 71% will support the ban (21% will not support it). In case of refusal to block drug distribution channels, 70% would support the ban (20% would not support it).

For reference 

On September 1-6 , 2024, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion poll, Omnibus, to which it added questions on its own initiative about Ukrainians' perception of security threats from social media and attitudes toward the ban on Telegram . A total of 1,015 respondents were interviewed by telephone based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers in all regions controlled by Ukraine  . The survey was conducted with adult citizens of Ukraine who at the time of the survey resided in the government-controlled territory of Ukraine . The sample did not include residents of the territories temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities (at the same time, some respondents were IDPs who moved from the occupied territories), and the survey was not conducted with citizens who left the country after February 24, 2022.

Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.3) did not exceed 4.1% for indicators close to 50%, 3.5% for indicators close to 25%, 2.5% for indicators close to 10%, and 1.8% for indicators close to 5%.

In wartime, in addition to this formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. The factors that can affect the quality of results in “wartime” conditions were previously cited by KIIS. 

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