Durov denied suggestions that Telegram is ‘some sort of anarchic paradise’, while the app removed language in its FAQ page that said private chats are protected from moderation.
Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov has made his first public comments since his arrest in France last month and has called the move “misguided”.
Durov was arrested by police at Le Bourget airport in the outskirts of Paris on Saturday 24 August, as part of a broader investigation into the spread of illegal content on the app. He was recently granted bail on the condition that he regularly report to a police station and remain in France, The Guardian reports.
In a post on Telegram, Durov said he was told by police that he may be “personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram” and called this “surprising for several reasons”. Durov said French authorities had “numerous ways” to contact him and that Telegram accepts and replies to EU requests.
“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” Durov said. “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.
“No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”
Durov admitted that Telegram is not “perfect” and that a recent surge in users caused “growing pains” that made it easier for criminals to abuse the platform. But he also denied suggestions that Telegram is “some sort of anarchic paradise”.
“We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” Durov said. “We publish daily transparency reports. We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.”
Quiet moderation changes
But while Durov defended Telegram’s moderation policies, the app has quietly been updating its FAQ page and removing language that protects private chats from moderation, as reported by The Verge. The app is well known for its focus on privacy, which is unfortunately a reason criminals turn to the platform.
In the FAQ page’s section on illegal content, Telegram previously said that all of its chats are “private amongst their participants” and that “we do not process any requests related to them”. But the updated FAQ has removed this language.
This updated section also immediately mentions a Report button that lets users flag illegal content for Telegram’s moderators – this was referenced before in the FAQ but in less detail.
Telegram has been criticised in the past for its ‘hands-off’ approach when it comes to content moderation, being accused of creating a space to spread illegal and extremist content. A Financial Times report claimed that Telegram was one of the main platforms used to organise the recent riots in the UK, along with TikTok and X.
But the arrest of Durov also sparked an outcry among various users online – Edward Snowden called it an “assault on the basic human rights of speech and association”.
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