Telegram CEO Pavel Durov immediately defended latest adjustments to his platform, amid issues his arrest in France has made the messaging app extra compliant with authorized requests to share consumer knowledge with the authorities.
Durov tried to reduce the importance of adjustments made to the app since he was arrested in August and charged with complicity in a spread of crimes, together with spreading sexual pictures of youngsters. He was forbidden from leaving France for six months and should seem at a police station twice every week.
In his publish, the 39-year-old not directly addressed hypothesis that Telegram could strengthen its notoriously light-touch content material moderation on account of his arrest. “Our core rules haven’t modified,” Durov careworn, in a publish on the platform. “We’ve all the time 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 latest uptick within the variety of EU authorized requests obtained and regarded legitimate by the app over the past a number of months to European authorities starting to make use of the proper Telegram electronic mail deal with.
But since Durov’s arrest, Telegram has launched a collection of delicate adjustments. In late August, the corporate’s FAQ web page learn: “To at the present time, we’ve got disclosed 0 bytes of consumer knowledge to 3rd events, together with governments.” Now the phrase “consumer knowledge” has been changed with “consumer 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 doable 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 consumer areas in response to authorized requests. “We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and telephone numbers of those that violate our guidelines might be disclosed to related authorities,” he stated on the time.
Right this moment, Durov framed these adjustments as a technicality. “Since 2018, Telegram has been capable of disclose IP addresses/telephone numbers of criminals to authorities,” he defined. Though final week he stated that privateness insurance policies in several nations 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 troublesome it was to contact its moderators.
Now, there are indicators Durov is adopting a extra conciliatory perspective towards the authorities. That has prompted panic amongst a few of the app’s much less savory customers, together with German extremists and Russian army bloggers, who’ve expressed concern that the CEO’s arrest could also be an try to entry their knowledge. Durov’s message immediately carried yet one more warning to them. “We don’t permit criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice,” he stated.
