The founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, on Thursday lashed out at French justice for arresting and charging him last month for posting extremist and illegal content on the popular messaging app.
In a long message on this platform, the first since his arrest, Durov claims to be “surprising” that he is held responsible for content posted by other people.
“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge executives with crimes committed by third parties on the platform they manage is a flawed approach,” he wrote.
“We are committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stand by our principles – our expertise is shaped by our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes – but we have always been open to dialogue.”
“Developing technology is hard enough. No innovator will create new tools if they know they can be held personally liable for potential abuse of those tools,” he added.
He also refuted accusations that “Telegram is a kind of anarchic paradise” as “absolutely false.” “We remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he said.
He also denied the French accusations that the platform had not responded to requests from his authorities and said that he had personally helped them “establish a line of contact with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism” in the country.
As a platform, we want our processes to be consistent globally, but we also want to ensure that they are not abused in countries with weak rule of law.
Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram
Growth problems lead criminals to abuse Telegram
But with a more conciliatory tone, Durov He also admitted that the growing number of users of Telegram (which he puts at 950 million in the world) “has caused growth problems that make it easier for criminals to abuse the platform.”
“That’s why I’ve made it my personal goal to ensure that things improve significantly in this regard,” added the businessman, who said that the issue is being worked on “internally” and that he will reveal more details in the future.
“I hope that the events of August will end up making Telegram (and the social media industry as a whole) safer and stronger,” he wrote.
But he also warned that if Telegram do not agree “on the right balance between privacy and security” with local regulators, then “they are willing to leave the country.”
Why was Pavel Durov arrested?
Durov, 39 years old, was charged after four days of detention in France on several charges related to failing to combat extremist and illegal content posted on its app.
His arrest sparked sympathy from another tech mogul and head of social network X, Elon Musk, who posted comments with the hashtag #FreePavel.
Durov He was arrested in the Le Bourget Airport on the outskirts of Paris after arriving on his private plane and was questioned in the following days by investigators.
He was granted bail of 5 million euros ($5.5 million) and on condition that he not leave France and report to a police station twice a week.
Durov He is an enigmatic figure who rarely speaks in public. Of Russian origin, he has that nationality but also obtained a French passport and that of the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram has its headquarters.
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The magazine Forbes estimates his current fortune at about 15.5 billion dollarsalthough he promotes the values of an ascetic life, with ice baths and avoiding alcohol or coffee.