International Courant
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has slammed French authorities, calling his arrest final week over allegations of insufficient moderation on the messaging app “misplaced.”
In his first public assertion since his arrest, he denied the declare that Telegram is “some sort of anarchist paradise,” calling it “utterly unfaithful.”
Mr Durov was arrested on August 25 at an airport north of Paris and has since been charged with suspected complicity in facilitating unlawful transactions, drug trafficking, fraud and the distribution of kid sexual abuse photos on his web site.
In Mr Durov’s assertion, which he revealed on Telegram, he stated it was a “stunning” and “misguided method” to carry him answerable for crimes dedicated by third events on the platform.
“If a rustic is sad with an Web service, it’s common follow to take authorized motion in opposition to the service itself,” stated the Russian-born billionaire, who additionally holds French nationality.
“It’s a misguided method to make use of pre-smartphone period legal guidelines to prosecute a CEO for crimes dedicated by third events on the platform he controls.”
“Constructing know-how is tough sufficient. No innovator will ever construct new instruments in the event that they know they are often held personally answerable for any misuse of these instruments,” he added.
He admitted that Telegram was not excellent, however stated French authorities had a number of methods to contact him and Telegram, and that the app has an official consultant within the EU.
“The claims in some media that Telegram is a few sort of anarchist paradise are completely false. We take away thousands and thousands of dangerous posts and channels daily,” he insisted.
Telegram permits teams of as much as 200,000 members. Critics say this is able to facilitate the spreading of misinformation and sharing of conspiracy theories, neo-Nazi, pedophile or terror-related content material.
The app just lately got here beneath fireplace within the UK for internet hosting far-right channels that performed a key position in organising violent dysfunction in English cities final month.
Whereas Telegram has eliminated some teams, cybersecurity consultants say its system for moderating extremist and unlawful content material is usually considerably weaker than that of different social media firms and messaging apps.
In his assertion on Thursday, Mr Durov admitted {that a} “sudden enhance” within the variety of customers of the messaging app – which he estimated at 950 million – had “created development points that made it simpler for criminals to abuse our platform.”
He stated he goals to “considerably enhance issues on this space.”
This comes after the BBC realized final week that Telegram refused to take part in worldwide applications aimed toward detecting and eradicating little one abuse materials on-line.
Pavel Durov, 39, was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, the place Telegram relies. He holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.
Telegram, which he based in 2013, is especially fashionable in Russia, Ukraine and the previous Soviet Union.
The app was banned in Russia in 2018 after beforehand refusing handy over consumer information. The ban was overturned in 2021.
Telegram is likely one of the largest social media platforms after Fb, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.
