The arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has had an impact. Over time, the messaging platform has become a type of deep web. That’s starting to have consequences.
Changing FAQs. Telegram has updated its FAQ page. In the section “There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?” The sentence “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them” has disappeared. This seems to imply that from now on, Telegram will moderate these regular conversations between users and in groups.
However, several X users have pointed out that the missing phrase is in other sections of Telegram’s FAQ page. Specifically, it appears in the question “A bot or channel is infringing on my copyright. What do I do?” There’s also a section explaining whether or not Telegram handles requests to remove content.
The bottom line: Everything is confusing. The changes to the FAQ section mean that users don’t know what to expect now. The disappearance of the phrase in the first question has made it seem plausible that Telegram will act where it didn’t before. However, the other two sections repeat what the FAQ said before. It’s unclear whether Telegram will moderate these normal chats or not.
Secret chats remain the most secure. These chats, which are genuinely private due to E2EE encryption, will continue to provide the highest level of security due to this encryption between clients, not client-server/server-client. Telegram doesn’t enable E2EE encryption for regular chats and group chats. As it has stated for years, it makes conversations less suspicious.
Durov’s first statements. Durov hadn’t spoken publicly about the arrest. However, he recently posted a message on Telegram, which he replicated on X with the phrase: “I’m still trying to understand what happened in France. But we hear the concerns. I made it my personal goal to prevent abusers of Telegram’s platform from interfering with the future of our 950+ million users.”
Telegram isn’t an “anarchist paradise.” Durov noted in the post on Telegram that “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.”
Image | Hubert Burda Media
View 0 comments