Durov speaks out, believes French arrest was “misguided”

Pavel Durov has spoken out for the first time after his arrest, while Telegram has quietly changed its FAQs.

Pavel Durov, the chief executive of the popular cloud-based messaging app Telegram, was recently arrested in France over the platform's lack of moderation and rife criminal activity.

Durov was arrested after his private jet landed at Le Bourget Airport. According to authorities, a warrant was out for his arrest relating to his popular social media app.

Since his arrest, there’s been radio silence. Now, Durov has spoken out via Telegram, criticizing the French authorities.

“Last month I got interviewed by police for four 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,” Durov said.

In the post, Durov outlined why he found his arrest “surprising,” saying that the French authorities’ decision to charge “a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” instead of charging its CEO, Durov mentioned.

The message posted to the official ‘Du Rove’s Channel’ on Telegram explained that the social media platform has an official representative in the European Union (EU) that accepts and replies to government requests.

The post continues by stating that the email address affiliated with this representative is publicly accessible and relatively easy to find. “Anyone in the EU who googles ‘Telegram EU address for law enforcement’” should be able to locate it.

The post expressed that since Durov is a French citizen, the French authorities should’ve had numerous ways to contact the CEO.

Telegram is based in Dubai, where Durov lives. He said that he’s a frequent guest of the French consulate” in the country and even helped the French establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with terrorism threats in France.

Despite supposedly helping the French during this time, the authorities still arrested him, which Durov considers erroneous and potentially hinders innovation.

“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,” his statement reads.”

Although Telegram claims to “reconcile privacy laws with law enforcement requirement, and local laws with EU laws,” sometimes it’s hard to agree with the country’s regulator on the balance between safety and security. “In those cases, we are ready to leave that country. We’ve done it many times”

“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.”

The post referenced the Telegram ban within Russia when Telegram refused to hand over encryption keys to the Kremlin. This also happened in Iran when the government asked for protest channels to be blocked – Telegram refused and was subsequently banned.

Despite what the media has said, according to Durov, Telegram isn’t an “anarchic paradise.” Instead Telegram supposedly takes down millions of harmful posts and channels, as well as publishing daily transparency reports.

The CEO blames the criminal activity present on Telegram on “growing pains” due to its abrupt increase in user count to 950 million, which made it easier for criminals to exploit the platform.

While all that’s being said, Telegram has been quietly updating its FAQ. ‘Db,’ an X account with almost 400,000 followers, posted a before and after shot of Telegram’s FAQ section.

The answer to the question, “There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?” changed quietly.

The original answer was that “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them.”

Now, the new process is that all Telegram apps have report buttons that allow you to flag illegal content to Telegram’s moderators.

Most commentators under the post saw Telegram as yet another company that's forced to change its way for authorities. One user said, “When companies like Telegram are forced to bend, we lose essential freedom bit by bit.”

Many others believe that this is a sign that Telegram now has a backdoor that would allow governments to obtain users' data.