French-Russian businessman Pavel Dúrov, founder of the Telegram app in question, has spoken out on his own channel about the accusations against him in France. In a message to users published this Friday, he acknowledges that his social network is not perfect, but denies that it is a “kind of anarchic paradise” and announces changes to make it “more secure”.
“We remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish transparency reports (like this one or this one) every day. We have hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests more quickly,” says Dúrov, who considers his arrest and indictment in France on charges including laundering of crimes and complicity in the distribution of child sex images “surprising.”
The Dubai-based businessman said that Telegram’s user base growth “to 950 million has caused growing pains that have made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” but he has made it “a personal goal” to “significantly improve things in this regard.” “We have already started this process internally and I will share with you more details about our progress very soon,” said Durov, who was released on probation after his arrest last August.
Regarding his accusation by the French justice system, he complained that “they had many means of communication” with him to ask for help and mentioned that, when they asked him, he personally helped them “establish a direct line with Telegram to deal with the threat” of terrorism in France.
“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to take legal action against the service itself. Using laws that predate the smartphone era to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he runs is not a good approach,” he said.
He also said that “developing the technology” is “quite difficult” and “establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy.” “Privacy laws need to be reconciled with law enforcement requirements and local laws with European Union laws,” he stressed, before clarifying that Telegram “has always” been open to dialogue with regulators. According to Durov, Telegram, “as a platform, wants its processes to be consistent globally, while ensuring that they are not abused in countries where the rule of law is weak.”
In this sense, he mentioned that when they fail to reach an agreement with a country’s regulator on the appropriate balance between privacy and security, “we are prepared to leave that country.” “We have done this several times. When Russia demanded that we hand over ‘encryption keys’ to enable surveillance, we refused and Telegram was banned in Russia. When Iran demanded that we block the channels of peaceful protesters, we refused and Telegram was banned in Iran.”
“We are prepared to abandon markets that are not compatible with our principles, because we are not in it for the money. We are driven by the intention to do good and to defend the fundamental rights of people, especially where these rights are violated,” he continued.
On Tuesday, South Korea’s communications regulator announced that messaging app Telegram had complied with its request to remove some pornographic content. deep false from its platform and apologized for its role in the wave of such content recently detected in the Asian country.
