Telegram will begin moderating non-public chats after CEO’s arrest

“Telegram’s abrupt improve in consumer depend to 950M brought on rising pains that made it simpler for criminals to abuse our platform,” he wrote within the assertion shared on Thursday. “That’s why I made it my private objective to make sure we considerably enhance issues on this regard. We’ve already began that course of internally, and I’ll share extra particulars on our progress with you very quickly.”

A few of these modifications seem like already taking impact: the corporate’s FAQ web page has modified within the final 24 hours. Take one part titled, “There’s unlawful content material on Telegram. How do I take it down?”

As of September fifth, Telegram’s response to the query learn: “All Telegram chats and group chats are non-public amongst their individuals. We don’t course of any requests associated to them.”

However on the time of this writing, these sentences have been eliminated. As an alternative, they’ve been changed with: “All Telegram apps have ‘Report’ buttons that allow you to flag unlawful content material for our moderators — in just some faucets,” adopted by directions on tips on how to report messages.

Durov’s arrest got here as French authorities issued preliminary prices saying the messaging platform is getting used for distributing baby sexual abuse materials and drug trafficking, and that the corporate refused to cooperate with investigators, based on the Related Press.