Following Founders’ Arrest, Telegram Will Allow Moderation of Private Chats

Telegram has updated its FAQ page to remove a promise that it wouldn’t narc on its users to the authorities. This is, once again, an important reminder that Telegram does not encrypt chats by default like WhatsApp or Signal.

As first spotted by The Verge, the old FAQ language vanished sometime on September 5. The service’s FAQ contains the question: “There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?” It originally said: “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them.”

Now that language is gone and in its place are instructions for filing a report. “All Telegram apps have ‘Report’ buttons that let you flag illegal content for our moderators—in just a few taps,” it said above instructions for specific apps. “You can also use our automated takedown email address [email protected].”

The change comes two weeks after CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on six separate charges related to nasty stuff on Telegram. Durov posted a lengthy public comment about the arrest on September 5 and said that Telegram would be moving in a more moderation-friendly direction.

Durov first pushed back on the idea that he wasn’t responsive to the French government’s take-down requests. “A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France,” he said. “If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. 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 noted that Telegram leaves markets that conflict with its principles all the time, noting that Iran banned the app after it refused to turn over information about protestors. He also said the app was banned in Russia after he refused to work with authorities. This is technically true, but the ban was a massive failure and Moscow later officially rescinded it. Russian authorities claimed they unblocked the app because Durov agreed to cooperate with them.

Durov highlighted Telegram’s efforts to work with authorities and remove illegal content from the site. “However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” he said. “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.”

There was no mention of the changes to the FAQ in Durov’s statement.