Telegram CEO Pavel Durov today defended recent changes to his platform as he worries his arrest in France has made the messaging app more likely to comply with legal requests to share user data with authorities.
Durov has tried to minimize the significance of the app's changes since he was arrested in August and charged with complicity in a series of crimes, including distributing sexual images of children. He was banned from leaving France for six months and had to appear at a police station twice a week.
In his post, the 39-year-old indirectly addressed speculation that Telegram could beef up its notoriously light content moderation as a result of his arrest. “Our core principles have not changed,” Durov emphasized in a post on the platform. “We have always endeavored to comply with relevant local laws, as long as they did not conflict with our values of freedom and privacy.”
He attributed a recent increase in the number of EU legal requests received and deemed valid by the app in recent months to European authorities starting to use the correct Telegram email address.
But since Durov's arrest, Telegram has introduced a series of subtle changes. In late August, the company's FAQ page stated: “To date, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.” Now the phrase 'user data' has been replaced by 'user messages'. Telegram did not respond to WIRED's request for comment asking what exactly this change means.
Then, in early September, Telegram quietly made it possible for users to report illegal content in private and group chats for moderators to review. Later that same month, Durov also announced that Telegram had changed its terms of service to prevent misuse of the app by criminals and would share user locations in response to legal requests. “We have made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules may be disclosed to the relevant authorities,” he said at the time.
Today, Durov has labeled these changes as a technical matter. “Since 2018, Telegram has been able to reveal IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities,” he explains. Although he said last week that privacy policies had “unified” across countries, he stressed that “in reality little has changed.”
What has changed, however, is Durov's tone. For years, Telegram cultivated an image as a proudly anti-authority platform that was politically neutral, while governments and digital rights groups complained about how difficult it was to contact its moderators.
Now there are signs that Durov is taking a more conciliatory stance towards the authorities. That has sparked panic among some of the app's less discerning users, including German extremists and Russian military bloggers, who have expressed concern that the CEO's arrest could be an attempt to gain access to their data. Durov's message today contained another warning. “We will not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice,” he said.
