He told Rest of World that his Twitter account went from zero to 12,000 followers in a little over a month. Spook’s footprint has grown since the beginning of the conflict. But, starting in early April, Spook took to playing the role of aggregator for graphic imagery that has been spreading within the broader OSINT community.

Prior to the civilian massacres in Bucha and Mariupol, Spook avoided corpse imagery. Spook, as he asked to be identified to Rest of World, to protect his anonymity, has been active for over eight years in the amateur open-source identification (OSINT) community, which uses publicly available information, such as satellite imagery, to analyze conflict zones and increasingly influences the accessibility of public information.

The feed on his channel of more than 1,500 subscribers is interspersed with memes mocking the dead and polls asking his subscribers what types of images they prefer. The Telegram user runs one of the most macabre channels dedicated to the war in Ukraine - a steady stream of photos and videos of the corpses of Russian soldiers in various stages of decay. All of Telegram's official components are open source, with the exception of the server which is closed-sourced and proprietary.This piece was originally published by Rest of World, a nonprofit newsroom covering global technology, and is being republished with permission. There are also two official Telegram web twin apps – WebK and WebZ – and numerous unofficial clients that make use of Telegram's protocol. Various client apps are available for desktop and mobile platforms including official apps for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux (although registration requires an iOS or Android device and a working phone number).

The servers of Telegram are distributed worldwide to decrease data load with five data centers in different regions, while the operational center is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It was launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October 2013. The service also provides end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing and several other features. Telegram is a free and open source, cross-platform, cloud -based instant messaging (IM) software.

Telegram is open source