Telegram-grundare uttalar sig efter gripande i Frankrike. Pavel Durov säger att tjänsten ska få ökad moderering.

Teknik

Motor

Samhälle

Spel

Popkultur

Fritid

Tjock

Tester

Dagens fråga

Tipsa!

Skaffa Feber+

Hetaste

Senaste

Telegram-grundare uttalar sig efter gripande i Frankrike

Pavel Durov säger att tjänsten ska få ökad moderering

Pavel Durov

Foto: TechCrunch / flickr

Telegrams grundare Pavel Durov har nu för första gången uttalat sig publikt efter det att han greps i Frankrike förra månaden. I ett inlägg på Telegram skriver Durov att han blev överraskad av att ha blivit gripen men medger att Telegram har en del att arbeta på när det gäller moderering av inläggen på sin tjänst:

"However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. 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. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon."

Telegram har nu även uppdaterat sin FAQ gällande eventuella åtgärder mot privata meddelanden som skickas på tjänsten. Fram tills igår det i den: "All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them."

Meningen ovan har nu ersatts av texten: "All Telegram apps have ‘Report’ buttons that let you flag illegal content for our moderators — in just a few taps", följt av instruktioner om hur användare kan rapportera inlägg som de anser bör bli granskade.

Durov släpptes från häktet i Frankrike efter fyra dagar. Han får dock inte lämna landet och är misstänkt för brott kopplade till olagliga transaktioner, pornografi och bedrägeri som skett på Telegram. Han är dock inte åtalad för något än så länge.

Ni hittar hela Durovs uttalande om gripandet i Frankrike här nedanför.

Thanks everyone for your support and love!

Last month I got interviewed by police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.

This was surprising for several reasons:

1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles “Telegram EU address for law enforcement”.

2. The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.

3. If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. 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. Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.

Establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy. You have to reconcile privacy laws with law enforcement requirements, and local laws with EU laws. You have to take into account technological limitations. As a platform, you want your processes to be consistent globally, while also ensuring they are not abused in countries with weak rule of law. We’ve been committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance. 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.

Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we are ready to leave that country. We've done it many times. When Russia demanded we hand over “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Russia. When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Iran. We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.

All of that does not mean Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities could be confused by where to send requests is something that we should improve. But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this or this ). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.

However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. 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. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.

I hope that the events of August will result in making Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — safer and stronger. Thanks again for your love and memes