Pavel Durov Promises Telegram Will Respond To Criticisms Regarding Content Moderation

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov (photo: x @RussieInfos ·)

JAKARTA Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced on Friday that the messaging application he leads will respond to criticism regarding content moderation and remove some abused features for illegal activities.

Durov, who last week was placed under formal investigation in France over the use of Telegram for crimes such as fraud, money laundering, and the spread of images of child sexual exploitation, conveyed this to his 12.2 million followers on the platform.

"Although 99.99% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illegal activities create a bad image for the entire platform, endangering the interests of nearly one billion of our users," wrote Durov, Russian-born tech entrepreneur.

"That's why this year we are committed to changing moderation on Telegram from a critical area to an lauded area," he said.

Although it did not specify how Telegram would achieve this, Durov said that the platform had disabled the new media upload feature on self- blogging tools "which appear to have been misused by anonymous actors."

Telegram has also removed the People Nearby feature, which is rarely used, because it "has problems with bots and scammers", and will replace it by showing verified official business around users.

This change is the first step announced since Durov was arrested last month in France, interrogated for four days, before being placed under an official investigation and released on bail.

The case shocked the global technology industry, raising questions about restrictions on freedom of speech online, monitoring social media platforms, and whether their owners are legally responsible for criminal behavior by users.

Durov's lawyer said that it did not make sense to investigate Telegram CEO regarding the crimes committed by others in the application.

Katie Harbath, a former director of public policy on Meta who is now the company's advisor on issues of technology, said, "It would be good if Durov began to seriously deal with content moderation, but like what Elon Musk and CEOs of other platforms did, if he thought it was just a matter of making some minor changes, he would be surprised."

Telegram has also removed a statement on its FAQ page stating that the platform does not process reports of illegal content in private chats because the chat is protected. Durov did not mention this change in his message, but did mention that Telegram had reached 10 million paid subscribers.

In an earlier post on Thursday, Durov admitted that Telegram was not perfect. "However, claims in some media that Telegram is a kind of anarchic paradise are completely untrue," he wrote. "We delete millions of malicious posts and channels every day."

He also stated that the investigation in France was surprising, as authorities there could have contacted representatives of Telegram in the European Union, or himself directly, to convey concerns.

"If a country is not happy with internet services, the practice that applies is to start legal action against the service," he concluded.