Telegram CEO Pavel Duvrov is discovering the benefits of hiring people other than technical engineers as, following recent criminal charges leveled against him in France for complicity in criminal activity committed on the platform, he has announced the company will now comply with requests made by law enforcement for user data.
As noted by 404 Media (via BBC News), the messaging platform has typically only ever included a clause in its terms of service that the only criminal activity it would cooperate with law enforcement on would be terror offenses, but this now appears to be changing.
Duvrov said in a Telegram post such a change “should discourage criminals”, though he hastened to add that “while 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk.”
Telegram user data implications
A “dedicated team of moderators” will, per Duvrov, now be scouring the platform to remove offensive material, but some researchers aren’t convinced that this will satisfy lawmakers.
Daphne Keller, from Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, noted some countries also mandate that platforms send notices regarding especially egregious material, such as that depicting child abuse.
"It sounds like a commitment that is likely less than what law enforcement wants," the BBC reported her.
While it’s fundamentally good that Telegram is now cooperating with law enforcement on crimes such as abuse and harassment, making it a safer place for users all round, the new terms of service change is likely to make Telegram much more dangerous for political dissidents.
John-Scott Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, acknowledges that the platform once “attracted people that wanted to feel safe sharing their political views in places like Russia, Belarus, and the Middle East,” but that those same people “are now scrutinizing Telegram's announcement with a basic question in mind: does this mean the platform will start cooperating with authorities in repressive regimes?“
These people, who we must stress do not extend to the far-right ‘activists’ who organized violent riots in England over the summer, deserve our sympathy. However, platforms must, on a base level, be safe from criminals.
Ultimately, genuine, persecuted dissidents shouldn’t feel the need to rely on centralized platforms to disseminate information and their own personal experiences. True, such platforms come with built-in audiences, but said audiences are there for primarily social or even criminal purposes, they’re likely not the right audiences.
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