Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov said the move was intended to “deter criminals” who harm the platform’s image.
Messaging app Telegram said it will hand over users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to the relevant authorities in the event of search warrants or other valid legal requests.
The change to the terms of service and privacy policy “should deter criminals,” CEO Pavel Durov said in a Telegram post on Monday (9/23).
“Although 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities creates a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of nearly a billion users at risk,” he continued.
The announcement marks a significant shift in the position of Durov, the platform’s Russian co-founder who was arrested by French authorities last month at an airport north of Paris.
Days later, prosecutors charged him with allowing his platform to be used for criminal activity. The charges against him include complicity in the distribution of child abuse images and drug trafficking. He was also charged with failing to comply with the law.
Durov denied the allegations and lashed out at authorities shortly after his arrest, saying that holding him responsible for crimes committed by others on the platform was “surprising” and “misleading.”
Telegram critics say the platform has become a hotbed of misinformation, child pornography and terrorist-related content, in part because of a feature that allows groups to have up to 200,000 members.
WhatsApp, owned by Meta, for example, limits group sizes to 1,000 users.
In Britain, Telegram came under scrutiny last month for hosting radical right-wing channels that contributed to violence in some British cities.
Earlier this week, Ukraine banned the app from government officials’ devices in an effort to minimize threats from Russia.
Durov’s arrest has sparked a debate about the future of online free speech protections.
After his arrest, many people began to question whether Telegram was truly a safe place for political dissidents, according to John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
Scott-Railton says the latest policy change is already sparking even more alarm in many communities.
“Promoting Telegram as a platform that could stand up to government demands attracted people who wanted to feel safe sharing their political views in places like Russia, Belarus and the Middle East,” Scott-Railton said.
“Many are now looking at Telegram’s announcement with one fundamental question in mind: Does this mean the platform will begin cooperating with the authorities of repressive regimes?”
Telegram did not provide details on how the company will handle requests from leaders of such regimes in the future, he added.
Cybersecurity experts say that while Telegram has removed some groups in the past, it has a much weaker system for moderating extremist and illegal content than competing social media companies and messaging apps.
According to 404 Media, before the recent expansion of this policy, Telegram only provided information on terrorist suspects.
On Monday (September 23), Durov said the app now employs “a dedicated team of moderators” who use artificial intelligence to hide problematic content in search results.
But making this type of material harder to find probably won’t be enough to satisfy French or European law, says Daphne Keller of Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society.
“Anything that Telegram employees look at and can reasonably determine is illegal, they should remove entirely,” Keller said.
In some countries, he added, they must also inform authorities about specific types of seriously illegal content, such as child pornography.
Keller questioned whether the company’s changes would be enough to satisfy authorities seeking information about the targets of investigations, including who they are communicating with and the content of those messages.
“It seems like a compromise that probably falls short of what the police want,” Keller said.
Source: Terra
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