Telegram has been under a lot of heat recently over its alleged failure to moderate content that is being circulated on the platform. Telegram chief Pavel Durov has recently said that the company will tackle criticism of its content moderation and might end up removing some features that had been abused for illegal activity. Durov was arrested last week and was being interrogated for crimes involving fraud, money laundering, and allowing the distribution of child pornography-related content.
Pavel Durov, in a message to Telegram users, wrote, “While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk. That’s why this year we are committed to turning moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise.”
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What Changes Will We See? (Expected)
The Telegram chief did not specify the changes that the company would make, but he did say that Telegram has already disabled new media uploads to a standalone blogging tool “which seems to have been misused by anonymous actors.” Apart from this, the company has also removed a little-used People Nearby feature that “had issues with bots and scammers” and would instead showcase legitimate, verified business in the vicinity of users.
Notably, these are the first changes that the tech titan has announced since his arrest.
Charging Telegram Chief For Crimes Committed By Users Is Absurd?
Durov’s lawyer has commented that it was absurd to investigate the Telegram chief in connection with crimes committed by the users of the app.
Durov in a post earlier admitted that Telegram is not perfect, but he also said, “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.”
As per Durov, he was quite surprised by the French investigation, because authorities there could have easily reached out to Telegram’s EU representative, or Durov himself, to raise concerns. He said, “If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself.”
