Telegram stresses private chat reporting as the app’s founder defends it after being arrested
The company said in its FAQ page that users can now report private chats to Telegram’s moderators. This comes after the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France last month for “crimes committed by third parties” on the platform.
The messaging app has more than 10 million members and almost 1 billion monthly active users. It has a reputation for not keeping a close eye on what its users do. The FAQ page used to say that requests to moderate the secret chats would not be accepted. “All Telegram chats and group chats are private between the people who are in them.” “We do not handle any requests that are related to them,” the FAQ page began.
Telegram changed the FAQ page on Thursday night. On its new frequently asked questions page, the company says, “All Telegram apps have ‘Report’ buttons that let you flag illegal content for our moderators with just a few taps.”
People Nearby was taken away by Telegram on Friday because it had “problems with bots and scammers.” It also stopped people from adding new media to Telegram, which is its writing tool. Durov said in a post that the feature seemed to have been “misused by anonymous actors.”
The platform also gave users an email address for automated takedown requests and told them to include links to material that needs moderator attention.
There’s no clear information on how or if this change affects Telegram’s ability to help law enforcement. In the past, the company has followed court orders to share some information about its users.
Remi Vaughn, a spokesman for Telegram, told TechCrunch that users could “always report messages from any group to moderators,” which is like “forwarding.” The only thing that the new FAQ says is that it is “clearer how to report content on Telegram, including via DSA.”
The changes to the FAQ language came after Durov was arrested by French police as part of an investigation into crimes involving child sexual abuse pictures, drug trafficking, and fraud.
After being arrested, Durov said on his Telegram channel, “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”
In his defense, he said that countries that are unhappy with an internet service usually take legal action against the service itself, not its management. He wrote on Friday that 99.999% of its users have “nothing to do with crime.”
Durov warned that “no innovator will ever build new tools” if business owners were held responsible for how their goods might be used wrongly.
Telegram said on Friday that it had more than 10 million paid users. The app’s membership service began in the middle of 2022.
Also Read: Telegram Now Has 950 Million Users and Wants to Open an App Shop
Telegram said that users could always report texts, so that part of the story was added. The story was also changed to say that Telegram now has 10 million paid users.
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