Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says his arrest is ‘misguided’ | EUROtoday

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has hit out at French authorities, calling his arrest final week in relation to allegations of inadequate moderation on the messaging app “misguided”.

In his first public assertion since he was detained, he denied claims that Telegram is “some sort of anarchic paradise” as “absolutely untrue”.

Mr Durov was arrested on 25 August at an airport north of Paris and has since been charged over suspected complicity in permitting illicit transactions, drug trafficking, fraud and the unfold of kid intercourse abuse photos to flourish on his web site.

In Mr Durov’s assertion, which he printed on Telegram, he stated holding him answerable for crimes dedicated by third events on the platform was each a “surprising” and “misguided approach”.

“If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” the Russian-born billionaire, who can be a French nationwide, stated.

“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.”

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools,” he added.

While he conceded that Telegram was not good, he stated French authorities had a number of methods to get in contact with him and with Telegram, and that the app has an official consultant within the EU.

“The claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he insisted.

Telegram permits teams of as much as 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it simpler for misinformation to unfold, and for customers to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content material.

Recently within the UK, the app has been scrutinised for internet hosting far-right channels that have been instrumental in organising violent dysfunction in English cities final month.

Telegram did take away some teams, nonetheless cybersecurity specialists say total its system of moderating extremist and unlawful content material is considerably weaker than that of different social media firms and messenger apps.

In his assertion on Thursday, Mr Durov admitted that an “abrupt increase” within the variety of customers on the messaging app – which he put at 950 million – had “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

He stated he would purpose to “significantly improve things in this regard”.

It comes after the BBC discovered final week that Telegram has refused to affix worldwide programmes geared toward detecting and eradicating youngster 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 widespread in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a earlier refusal by him handy over person information. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.