Source: ZeroHedge.com
In his first public statements since his arrest by France on Aug. 24 at Paris’ Le Bourget airport, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov blasted French authorities for detaining and charging him, but also admitted that Telegram is not perfect that he’ll work to clean up instances of criminals abusing the platform.
He argued in a post to Telegram that it wildly departs from norms for a government to go after a CEO personally, as opposed to the “established practice” of bringing legal against the company.
“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,” the billionaire tech entrepreneur wrote.
“Building technology is hard enough as it is,” he continued. “No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”
“We’ve been committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance [between privacy and security],” Durov continued. “Yes, we stand by our principles: our experience is shaped by our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes. But we’ve always been open to dialogue.”
Durav was detained by the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), over the alleged facilitation of various crimes including terrorism, narcotics trafficking, child abuse, modey laundering and fraud. “On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of offences and crimes to be committed, for which he did nothing to moderate or cooperate,” a source told TF1 TV.
It appears that Telegram has already begun quietly implementing changes in response to French and EU criticisms surrounding the case, especially related to the issue of chat moderation…
“We hear voices saying that it’s not enough,” Durov said in his new post. “Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard.”
Coindesk has described the initial changes to the app/platform already made as ‘radical‘:
Telegram is radically altering its stance towards “illegal” use of its messaging days after CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France for allegedly failing to police law-breaking content.
On Thursday night, the formerly freewheeling texting app extended its moderators’ reach to include private chats. For the first time, users in private chats can “flag illegal content” for review, Telegram wrote in a change on its FAQ page. An older version of the same page said Telegram treated private groups as off-limits….