Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Friday announced a series of new features aimed at combating illegal content, bots and scammers, a week after being arrested and charged by French authorities for violations on the messaging app.
On Thursday, Durov broke his silence with his first public statement since his arrest, which he described as “wrong” and “surprising.”
But he also acknowledged that Telegram was “not perfect” and that it would take further action against illegal content, which he said came from a tiny fraction of its 950 million users.
“While 99.999 percent of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001 percent involved in illicit activities creates a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our nearly 1 billion users at risk,” he wrote in a statement on Telegram on Friday.
“That’s why this year we’ve committed to moving moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism to one of praise,” he added.
Durov said Telegram had removed the “people nearby” feature, which allowed users to locate other Telegram users but which he said was “used by less than 0.1 percent of Telegram users” and “had problems with bots and scammers.”
Instead, Telegram is launching “nearby businesses” to showcase “legitimate and verified businesses.”
Telegram has also disabled the upload of new content to Telegraph, its standalone blogging tool, “which appears to have been misused by anonymous actors,” it said.
After four days of detention, Durov, 39, was charged with several counts of failing to curb extremist and illegal content on Telegram.
He was arrested on August 24 at Le Bourget airport outside Paris after arriving aboard a private jet, and was questioned by investigators in the following days.
Durov was granted bail of five million euros ($5.5 million) on condition that he report to police twice a week and remain in France.
On Thursday, he defiantly claimed that France was wrong to hold him responsible for “crimes committed by third parties on the platform.”
Durov, an enigmatic figure who rarely speaks in public, is a citizen of Russia, France and the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based.
With AFP
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2024-09-11 01:58:47