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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Promises Changes, Noting It's Become Easier for 'Criminals to Abuse Our Platform'

"Establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy," he wrote on Telegram.

Updated Sep 6, 2024, 8:24 p.m. Published Sep 6, 2024, 1:28 a.m.

Telegram changed its rules. (Shutterstock)

CORRECTION (Sept. 6, 2024, 20:19 UTC): An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Telegram had changed its policy for private chats to permit moderators to police them. According to Telegram, there has been no change; moderators were already able to review private chats if a member of that chat requested that.

Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram who was recently jailed in France over allegations his social-media and messaging giant failed to police illegal content, said Thursday that the app's rapid growth "made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform" and promised changes.

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Durov, in a post on Telegram, expressed surprise at his arrest in France, writing that it's unusual for a country to hold a founder accountable for what other people do on their platform.

I'm still trying to understand what happened in France. But we hear the concerns. I made it my personal goal to prevent abusers of Telegram's platform from interfering with the future of our 950+ million users.

My full post below. https://t.co/cDvRSodjst
— Pavel Durov (@durov) September 5, 2024

He nonetheless said that "establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy."

Durov said that when Telegram is unable to agree with a country's approach, it leaves that country – as it did with Russia.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.