Telegram founder and chief govt Pavel Durov hit out at France for arresting and charging him final month over the publication of extremist and unlawful content material on the favored messaging app.
In a prolonged publish on Telegram early on Friday, his first remark since his arrest, Durov prompt that he should not have been focused personally and that French authorities ought to have approached his firm with their complaints fairly than detaining him.
He nonetheless promised to step up efforts to combat criminality on the messaging app, after French authorities handed him preliminary fees for allegedly permitting the platform’s use for prison exercise.
French investigators detained Durov at Le Bourget airport outdoors Paris in late August and questioned him for 4 days as a part of a sweeping probe opened earlier this 12 months.
Released on 5 million euros ($5.5 million) bail, Durov has to report back to a police station twice per week. Russia-born, he has amassed a number of citizenships, together with French.
French allegations towards Durov embody that Telegram is used for baby sexual abuse materials and drug trafficking and that the platform refused to share data or paperwork with investigators when required by legislation.
Durov mentioned it was “surprising” he was being held answerable for different folks’s content material.
“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” he mentioned.
“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.”
Telegram, he mentioned, was not excellent, however he denied any abuse related to the app.
“But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue,” he wrote. “We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day.”
In his publish, Durov mentioned that whereas in police detention, “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.”
“This was shocking for a number of causes,” he added.
Durov mentioned Telegram has an official consultant within the European Union who replies to EU requests, with a public e mail handle.
Telegram’s web site informs customers that they’ll contact the app by way of a bot and features a hyperlink to report unlawful content material. It additionally contains an e mail handle and telephone quantity for “competent authorities of the EU and EU members” to make use of.
“If you aren’t a reliable EU or EU member authority, your request is not going to be processed,” it says.
In his publish, Durov mentioned, “French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance.” He mentioned he additionally had beforehand labored with them to “set up a hotline with Telegram to take care of the specter of terrorism in France.”
“If a rustic is sad with an web service, the established observe is to begin a authorized motion towards the service itself,” he mentioned.
‘Growing pains’
But placing a extra conciliatory tone on the finish of his message, Durov mentioned Telegram’s hovering consumer numbers – which he now put at 950 million worldwide – “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”
“That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard,” he mentioned, including that this was being labored out “internally” and extra particulars could be shared sooner or later.
“I hope that the events of August will result in making Telegram – and the social networking industry as a whole – safer and stronger.”
He mentioned that when Telegram couldn’t agree on the “right balance between privacy and security” with native regulators then “we are ready to leave that country.”
Durov, 39, has acquired assist from fellow tech tycoon and chief govt of X, Elon Musk, who posted feedback underneath the hashtag #FreePavel.
An enigmatic determine who hardly ever speaks in public, Durov is a citizen of Russia, France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the place Telegram is predicated.
Forbes journal estimates his present fortune at $15.5 billion, although he proudly promotes the virtues of an ascetic life that features ice baths and never ingesting alcohol or espresso.
Source: www.dailysabah.com