Daily Times

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov criticised France for his recent arrest over extremist content on the messaging platform. In his first public comment on Telegram, Durov called it “surprising” he was arrested for third-party actions, condemning the use of outdated laws to charge platform executives for user-generated content.

Telegram founder and chief executive Pavel Durov on Thursday hit out at France for arresting and charging him last month over the publication of extremist and illegal content on the popular messaging app.

In a lengthy post on Telegram, his first comment since his arrest, Durov said it was “surprising” he was being held responsible for other people’s content.

“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,” he said.

He also lashed out at claims that “Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise” as “absolutely untrue”, insisting: “We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day.” He denied accusations from France that Paris had not received responses from Telegram to its requests, saying he had personally helped French authorities “establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France”. But striking a more conciliatory tone at the end of his message, Durov said Telegram’s soaring user numbers — which he now put at 950 million worldwide — “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,” he said, adding that this was being worked out “internally” and more details would be shared in the future.

“I hope that the events of August will result in making Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — safer and stronger.”

He said that when Telegram could not agree on the “right balance between privacy and security” with local regulators then “we are ready to leave that country”.