Telegram wages war on child abusers

Telegram has joined the Internet Watch Foundation to help tackle the spread of child sexual abuse material on its platform.

Telegram has been in the news a lot lately, with the arrest of its CEO Pavel Durov in France and the platform’s swift pivot from never sharing users’ data with authorities to providing data when legally requested.

Now, Telegram has joined forces with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), something they avoided for years, to help stop the proliferation of child sexual abuse material on its platform.

One of the reasons Durov was arrested in France was that the CEO was accused of not cooperating with law enforcement and turning a blind eye to crimes like child sexual abuse.

This cooperation between Telegram and IWF seems to signal a new era for the encrypted social media platform and perhaps serves as a warning to those using the platform for nefarious purposes.

The IWF is a UK-based non-profit that works in partnership with organizations and institutions to” stop the availability of child sexual abuse images and videos.”

Telegram, which has 950 million active users worldwide, will leverage the IWF’s tools (and its own) to detect, disrupt, remove, and block child pornography and other abuse materials, the IWF said.

The social media network has been granted membership and will have access to IWF’s datasets and technology, which should help stop the proliferation of child pornography.

Telegram will now be able to use IWF services, including “hashes,” which will detect child sexual abuse images and videos being shared on public parts of the site, which will then be blocked.

IWF and Telegram will also work together to block and prevent “non-photographic” depictions of child sexual abuse, like artificial intelligence abuse material.

The platform will also block links to sites that are known to contain child sexual abuse materials.

However, there’s no indication that any particular accounts or persons would be reported to authorities, just that child pornography of any kind will be taken down and blocked.

Tumultuous times for Telegram

Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has been in the spotlight this year after being arrested in France in August.

Durov was accused of not cooperating with law enforcement regarding crimes such as child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and fraud. The CEO then spoke out against the French authorities, saying that his arrest was “misguided.”

Telegram, previously known for never providing users’ data to authorities, had a change of heart and announced that authorities would have to provide search warrants or other valid legal requests if they expected to receive users’ IP addresses and phone numbers.

According to Durov, the move “should discourage criminals.”