Telegram will start moderating private chats after CEO’s arrest

Telegram has quietly removed language from its FAQ page that said private chats were protected from moderation requests. The change comes nearly two weeks after its CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France for allegedly allowing “criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.”

Earlier today, Durov issued his first public statement since his arrest, promising to moderate content more on the platform — a noticeable change in tone after the company initially said he had “nothing to hide”. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company wrote in an unattributed statement posted in August.

Now, Durov appears to have changed his tone.

“Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” he wrote in the statement shared today. “That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”

Some of those changes appear to be already taking effect: the company’s FAQ page has changed in the last 24 hours. Take one section titled, “There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?”

As of September 5th, Telegram’s response to the question read in part, “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them,” according to a Wayback Machine archive of the page.

But at the time of this writing, that sentence has been removed. Instead, has been replaced with: “All Telegram apps have ‘Report’ buttons that let you flag illegal content for our moderators — in just a few taps,” followed by instructions on how to report content.

Durov’s arrest came as French authorities issued preliminary charges saying the messaging platforms is being used for distributing child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and that the company refused to cooperate with investigators, according to the Associated Press. The platform serves as a way for people to get crucial information about Russia’s war in Ukraine, but has historically taken a hands-off approach to moderating content.