Well much like the owner of omegle found out you can't provide platforms for criminal activities and make no effort to curb it. It only takes a 30 second google before you find telegram rooms offering all kinds of illegal stuff. You don't find that on Twitter. Twitter is atleast mildly moderated. Telegram could have moderation built in to catch illegal activities but it chooses to do nothing. See the difference?

> It only takes a 30 second google before you find telegram rooms offering all kinds of illegal stuff.

For fun, I tried that and was unsuccessful, at least in the allotted time.

Google turned up many third-party references to illegal activity on Telegram, but that's not the same thing.

You have to use the Search built into Telegram and you can find illegal stuffs within seconds.

Search for any of these phrases and it will return tons of channels to join:

- Combo lists - Check fraud - Redline Stealer - Bank logs

There are tens of thousands of channels on Telegram w illegal content and material.

I really do hope they dont shut it down bc it's an extremely valuable asset in terms of intelligence and monitoring criminals haha

Source: I work in CTI and actively monitor and scan thousands of Telegram channels.

I'm not sure whether to "thank" you for what sounds like my exciting new hobby!

It's a lot of fun and a super neat project! I totally nerd out on it.

I used python and the Telethon and Pyrogram frameworks to help scrape and monitor em.

A paid Telegram account can be in 1k channels/groups. A free Telegram account can be in 500 channels/groups.

Good luck and happy programming!

The fun fact is that while Telegram won't make use of something akin to PicDNA to automatically detect CSAM, it will very happily take down your channel or group if you distribute copyrighted material.

They do know how to respond to copyright complaints. Not so much about other, far more serious sort of illegal activities. Just on that point, they should have expected something to be done against them.

Telegram is end-to-end encrypted in private chats, the Telegram team doesn't even know what people are discussing. Same should happen with Whatsapp or Signal. Should Whatsapp or Signal be accountable for what terrorists talk in private?

App can have internal keyword check that could open backdoor to law enforcement when certain terms are said. *fbi enters the conversation* probably won't be in your chat log anytime soon but you can't argue telegram, signal and whatsapp can't do it. Whatsapp being fbs darling almost certainly does already and signal servers anti spam folder is smelling mighty like a five eyes backdoor.

Tbh given both those apps company's have dealings with gov in aus I'm gonna say signals probably already got a backdoor into em. If you don't think so you don't know aus law well enough or who signals are.

Also the owners of the apps aren't liable for the content of the conversations. Their liable for providing a platform for the conversation to take place and for not knowingly taking available efforts to curb criminal activity on that platfor/service. It's like hey I'm gonna rent you a store house to hide all your illegal drugs in Mr gang member. I'm not doing the hiding or anything but I'm assisting the activity by providing the store house. I could make efforts to curb such activity like you know doing a rental inspection once every six months but I choose not to and turn a blind eye. Am I assisting a crime or am I completely innocent? Now repeat this but telegram is the store house.

Telegram has an open-source client and is moving to verifiable builds (not on every platform). You cannot hide such a backdoor, and users would be able to recompile a clean version of the app.

> Telegram is end-to-end encrypted in private chats

Not by default (unlike the other services you've mentioned )?

Twitter already got warned about hosting Trump by the EU.

That warning was not an official EU position:

> "Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, had posted the warning letter on X, the platform owned by Musk, hours before the billionaire interviewed US presidential candidate Donald Trump, also on X."

> "On Tuesday the European Commission denied Breton had approval from its president Ursula von der Leyen to send the letter."

https://www.ft.com/content/09cf4713-7199-4e47-a373-ed5de61c2...

https://archive.ph/zugnf

Ursula von der Leyen is not the Queen of the EU, no matter how much she'd like to be. Other people have the authority to speak and act officially without checking with her. That doesn't make their statements any less official, nor would her endorsement make them any more official.

"Official" in the sense that the statement carries the complete backing of the institution and is a public declaration of its position.

The fact that it was wound back by the head of the EU's executive branch - Breton's boss - demoted the statement to "the opinion of the commissioner".

>The fact that it was wound back by the head of the EU's executive branch - Breton's boss - demoted the statement to "the opinion of the commissioner".

I don't remember anything about "the opinion of the commissioner" in the letter, but there was huge "eu commission" sign right on the top. So the letter went as complitly "official" position of commission.

Note that the article says:

> Breton is empowered to oversee enforcement of the DSA and can communicate independently with companies.

So maybe he didn't need to get permission from anyone to send the letter.

The contents of the letter are within his brief, but the timing of it was done in such a way as to impact the EU's foreign policy, which lies outside of his remit.

Great, arrest both, I don't like them anyway.