Telegram has quietly removed language from its FAQ page that said private chats were protected from moderation requests. The change comes nearly two weeks after its CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France for allegedly allowing “criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.”
Earlier today, Durov issued his first public statement since his arrest, promising to moderate content more on the platform — a noticeable change in tone after the company initially said he had “nothing to hide”. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company wrote in an unattributed statement posted in August.
Now, Durov appears to have changed his tone.
“Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” he wrote in the statement shared today. “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.”
I’m still trying to understand what happened in France. But we hear the concerns. I made it my personal goal to prevent abusers of Telegram’s platform from interfering with the future of our 950+ million users.
My full post below. https://t.co/cDvRSodjst
— Pavel Durov (@durov) September 5, 2024
Some of those changes appear to be already taking effect: the company’s FAQ page has changed in the last 24 hours. Take one section titled, “There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?”
As of September 5th, Telegram’s response to the question read in part, “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them,” according to a Wayback Machine archive of the page.