Telegram is not an “anarchic paradise,” CEO Pavel Durov says after arrest

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, in his first public comments since being arrested by French authorities, said that Telegram is not an “anarchic paradise” but promised that the platform will enhance its moderation of harmful content.

While Telegram has room for improvement, “the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue,” Durov wrote on Telegram yesterday. “We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this or this). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.”

The links Durov provided go to Telegram channels that report the number of groups and channels banned for terrorist content and child-abuse content. Telegram has been criticized by groups such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for allegedly not cooperating on removal of child sexual abuse material.

Durov said Telegram has heard criticism that its moderation efforts are “not enough,” adding that “Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”

Durov is forbidden from leaving France after his indictment last week. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau alleged that law enforcement authorities received a near-total lack of response from Telegram to requests for cooperation in cases related to crimes against minors, drug crimes, and online hate.

FAQ signals new approach to “private” messages

Telegram already made a change to its FAQ in a section on how the company handles illegal content. The change suggests Telegram may do more moderation of private messages.

An Internet Archive capture of the FAQ page from yesterday contained the following text:

Q: There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?
All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them.

But sticker sets, channels, and bots on Telegram are publicly available. If you find sticker sets or bots on Telegram that you think are illegal, please ping us at abuse@telegram.org.

You can also use the ‘report’ buttons right inside our apps, see this post on our official @ISISwatch channel for details.

That section in the current version of the FAQ page was heavily rewritten. The statement that all chats are private and that Telegram does not “process any requests related to them” has been removed. It now says, “All Telegram apps have ‘Report’ buttons that let you flag illegal content for our moderators—in just a few taps,” and goes on to provide more specific instructions on how to report illegal content in messages.

Some of the key language removed from the section on illegal content remains in the FAQ section on how to report copyright infringement. The copyright section still contains the statement that all chats are private and that Telegram does not “process any requests related to them.” Despite that, testing the app today showed that clicking “Report” on a Telegram message provides an option to report copyright infringement. Users can also report messages for spam, violence, pornography, child abuse, illegal drugs, or personal details.

Telegram messages do not have end-to-end encryption by default, but the security feature can be enabled for one-on-one conversations. The app has social-network features letting users create groups of up to 200,000 people and channels for posting of public messages to audiences of any size. Telegram users cannot enable end-to-end encryption on group messages.