Telegram CEO Pavel Durov today defended recent changes to its platform, amid concerns that his arrest in France has made the messaging app better compliant with legal requests to share user data with authorities. .
Durov has attempted to downplay the significance of changes made to the app since he was arrested in August and charged with complicity in a variety of crimes, including the dissemination of sexual images of children. He was banned from leaving France for six months and must report to a police station twice a week.
In his post, the 39-year-old indirectly addressed speculation that Telegram might strengthen its notoriously light content moderation as a result of his arrest. “Our fundamental principles have not changed,” Durov stressed in a post on the platform. “We have always strived to comply with relevant local laws, as long as they do not go against 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.
However, since Durov’s arrest, Telegram has introduced a number of subtle changes. In late August, the company’s FAQ page said: “As of today, 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 Now the phrase “user data” has been replaced by “user messages.”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 review by moderators. Later that same month, Durov also announced that Telegram had changed its terms of service to prevent abuse of the app by criminals and would share users’ 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 framed those changes as a technicality. “Since 2018, Telegram has been able to reveal IP addresses and phone numbers of criminals to authorities,” he explained. Although last week he said that privacy policies in different countries had been “unified,” he insisted that “in reality, little has changed.”
What has changed, however, is Durov’s tone. For years, Telegram cultivated an image as a proudly anti-authoritarian and politically neutral platform, while governments and digital rights groups lamented how difficult it was to contact its moderators.
There are now signs that Durov is adopting a more conciliatory attitude toward the authorities. This has caused panic among some of the app’s less knowledgeable users, including German extremists and Russian military bloggerswho have expressed concern that the CEO’s arrest could be an attempt to access their data. Durov’s message today carried another warning for them. “We do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice,” he said.