Telegram CEO Pavel Durov right this moment defended current modifications to his platform, amid considerations his arrest in France has made the messaging app extra compliant with authorized requests to share person knowledge with the authorities.
Durov tried to attenuate the importance of modifications made to the app since he was arrested in August and charged with complicity in a variety of crimes, together with spreading sexual photos of youngsters. He was forbidden from leaving France for six months and should seem at a police station twice per week.
In his submit, the 39-year-old not directly addressed hypothesis that Telegram might strengthen its notoriously light-touch content moderation because of his arrest. “Our core rules haven’t modified,” Durov careworn, in a submit on the platform. “We’ve at all times strived to adjust to related native legal guidelines—so long as they didn’t go towards our values of freedom and privateness.”
He attributed a current uptick within the variety of EU authorized requests acquired and thought of legitimate by the app during the last a number of months to European authorities starting to make use of the proper Telegram e mail deal with.
But since Durov’s arrest, Telegram has launched a collection of refined modifications. In late August, the corporate’s FAQ web page learn: “To today, we now have disclosed 0 bytes of person knowledge to 3rd events, together with governments.” Now the phrase “person knowledge” has been changed with “person messages.” Telegram didn’t reply to WIRED’s request for remark asking what precisely this transformation means.
Then, early in September, Telegram quietly made it potential for customers to report unlawful content material in non-public and group chats for moderators to overview. Later that very same month, Durov additionally introduced Telegram had modified its phrases of service to stop the app’s abuse by criminals and would share person areas in response to authorized requests. “We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and cellphone numbers of those that violate our guidelines might be disclosed to related authorities,” he stated on the time.
Immediately, Durov framed these modifications as a technicality. “Since 2018, Telegram has been in a position to disclose IP addresses/cellphone numbers of criminals to authorities,” he defined. Though final week he stated that privateness insurance policies in several international locations had been “unified,” he insisted that “in actuality, little has modified.”
What has modified, nevertheless, is Durov’s tone. For years, Telegram cultivated a picture as a proudly anti-authority platform that was politically impartial, whereas governments and digital rights teams bemoaned how tough it was to contact its moderators.
Now, there are indicators Durov is adopting a extra conciliatory angle towards the authorities. That has prompted panic amongst a number of the app’s much less savory customers, together with German extremists and Russian military bloggers, who’ve expressed concern that the CEO’s arrest could also be an try and entry their knowledge. Durov’s message right this moment carried one more warning to them. “We don’t permit criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice,” he stated.
