Pavel Durov has expressed surprise over the allegations of being personally responsible for Telegram’s illegal use by others. In a recent Telegram’s post, he clarified that Telegram has an official representative in the EU that responds to EU requests and its email address has been publicly available to anyone in the EU. He lamented that there were other ways to access him and he had recently assisted the French authorities in establishing a hotline with Telegram to tackle terrorism in France.
Durov criticized the way he was blamed for the crimes committed by third parties on his platform and warned that no one would dare in the future to build new tools if they anticipated similar treatment for any potential abuse of those tools.
He then emphasized the difficulty in balancing privacy and security while operating a global platform. He noted that it involves reconciling privacy laws with law enforcement requirements, and also ensuring that the platform is not being abused in authoritarian regimes. Durov claimed that Telegram leaves such countries in case of disagreement on these issues. He quoted examples of Russia and Iran where Russia had demanded to hand over encryption keys to enable surveillance whereas Iran had demanded to block channels of peaceful protesters. Telegram’s refusal to both requests resulted in to banning of Telegram in both countries.
He rejected the portrayal of Telegram as an anarchic paradise. He declared that Telegram removes millions of harmful posts and channels every day and publishes daily transparency reports. Further, it also has direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.
Durov then acknowledged the shortcomings of Telegram due to its growing user base. He admitted that it has become easier for criminals to abuse the platform. He renewed his commitment to tackle all such problems in the future and assured that they are working to improve their moderation efforts.
In a recent development, Durov has also announced disabling the “People Nearby” feature from Telegram. He stated that this feature was being used by only a few Telegram users. Instead, there would be a new “businesses nearby” option.