Telegram CEO says he’ll average higher after getting arrested in France

 ❤️ Thanks everybody to your assist and love!

Final month I acquired interviewed by police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I used to be advised I could also be personally answerable for different individuals’s unlawful use of Telegram, as a result of the French authorities didn’t obtain responses from Telegram.

This was stunning for a number of causes: 

1. Telegram has an official consultant within the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its electronic mail handle has been publicly out there for anybody within the EU who googles “Telegram EU handle for regulation enforcement”. 

2. The French authorities had quite a few methods to succeed in me to request help. As a French citizen, I used to be a frequent visitor on the French consulate in Dubai. Some time in the past, when requested, I personally helped them set up a hotline with Telegram to cope with the specter of terrorism in France.

3. If a rustic is sad with an web service, the established apply is to start out a authorized motion towards the service itself. Utilizing legal guidelines from the pre-smartphone period to cost a CEO with crimes dedicated by third events on the platform he manages is a misguided method. Constructing know-how is difficult sufficient as it’s. No innovator will ever construct new instruments in the event that they know they are often personally held answerable for potential abuse of these instruments. 

Establishing the proper stability between privateness and safety shouldn’t be simple. It’s a must to reconcile privateness legal guidelines with regulation enforcement necessities, and native legal guidelines with EU legal guidelines. It’s a must to bear in mind technological limitations. As a platform, you need your processes to be constant globally, whereas additionally making certain they aren’t abused in nations with weak rule of regulation. We’ve been dedicated to participating with regulators to search out the proper stability. Sure, we stand by our rules: our expertise is formed by our mission to guard our customers in authoritarian regimes. However we’ve at all times been open to dialogue.

Typically we will’t agree with a rustic’s regulator on the proper stability between privateness and safety. In these instances, we’re prepared to depart that nation. We’ve finished it many instances. When Russia demanded we hand over “encryption keys” to allow surveillance, we refused — and Telegram acquired banned in Russia. When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceable protesters, we refused — and Telegram acquired banned in Iran. We’re ready to depart markets that aren’t suitable with our rules, as a result of we’re not doing this for cash. We’re pushed by the intention to deliver good and defend the fundamental rights of individuals, significantly in locations the place these rights are violated.

All of that doesn’t imply Telegram is ideal. Even the truth that authorities could possibly be confused by the place to ship requests is one thing that we should always enhance. However the claims in some media that Telegram is a few kind of anarchic paradise are completely unfaithful. We take down thousands and thousands of dangerous posts and channels day by day. We publish day by day transparency studies (like this or this ). We’ve got direct hotlines with NGOs to course of pressing moderation requests sooner.

Nonetheless, we hear voices saying that it’s not sufficient. Telegram’s abrupt improve in consumer rely to 950M prompted rising pains that made it simpler for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my private objective to make sure we considerably enhance issues on this regard. We’ve already began that course of internally, and I’ll share extra particulars on our progress with you very quickly. 

I hope that the occasions of August will end in making Telegram — and the social networking trade as an entire — safer and stronger. Thanks once more to your love and memes 🙏