He'd have you believe that all messages are welcome on Telegram, that no material is censored, that it's all about free expression, that they're too small to provide moderation.
But when an account is flagged for spam, Telegram rapidly responds and restricts or kills the account. So they can and do moderate content.
It's just that accounts can get flagged for CSAM hundreds of times and Telegram takes no action.
They're making a choice to provide a platform for this material. That's against the law and prison time is absolutely justified.
https://restoreprivacy.com/telegram-sharing-user-data/
> the operators of the messenger app Telegram have released user data to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in several cases. According to SPIEGEL information, this was data from suspects in the areas of child abuse and terrorism. In the case of violations of other criminal offenses, it is still difficult for German investigators to obtain information from Telegram, according to security circles.
Signal and Telegram were publicly sparring in May 2024, https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/chat-apps-government-ties-a...
> two popular chat services have accused each other of having undisclosed government ties. According to Signal president Meredith Whittaker, Telegram is not only “notoriously insecure” but also “routinely cooperates with governments behind the scenes.” Telegram founder Pavel Durov, on the other hand, claims that “the US government spent $3 million to build Signal’s encryption” and Signal’s current leaders are “activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad.”
"other offences" probably means copyright issues?
sounds logical and can probably be checked!
>"routinely cooperates with governments behind the scenes.”
sounds logical and being a big company I suppose true.
>“the US government spent $3 million to build Signal’s encryption”
sounds probable, meaning they got funding from some NSA project.
>“activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad.”
this sounds a bit crazy!
In my experience it's the channel's admins who respond, not Telegram's.
If that's the case then CSAM not getting actioned is probably just channel admins allowing content that they approve of.
I suspect that Telegram could put significantly more effort into CSAM suppression and enforcement, but I seriously doubt this is really what's up with the French arrest of Durov.
> Telegram has been used by protesters in places like Hong Kong, Belarus, Kazakhstan, even in Barcelona back in the day. It's been a tool for the opposition to a large extent. But it doesn't really matter whether it's opposition or the ruling party that is using Telegram. For us, we apply the rules equally to all sides. We don't become prejudiced in this way.
> It's not that we are rooting for the opposition or we are rooting for the ruling party. It's not that we don't care, but we think it's important to have this platform that is neutral to all voices because we believe that the competition of different ideas can result in progress and a better world for everyone.. You don't want to be geopolitically aligned. You don't want to select the winners in any of these political fights.