Telegram begins moderation of private chats after CEO arrest

Now Durov appears to have changed his tune.

“Telegram's rapid growth to 950 million users has caused growing pains and made it easier for criminals to exploit the platform,” he said in a statement today. “As such, I have made it a personal goal to significantly improve this. We have already begun that process internally and will provide more details on our progress soon.”

Some of these changes appear to be taking effect already: The company's FAQ page was altered in the last 24 hours, taking as an example the section titled “I have illegal content on Telegram, how do I remove it?”

As of September 5, Telegram responded to this question by saying, “All chats and group chats on Telegram are private between participants. We do not process any requests related to them,” according to an archive of the page in the Wayback Machine.

However, as of the time of writing, that sentence has been removed, and instead it says, “All Telegram apps have a 'Report' button that allows you to report illegal content to our moderators with just a few taps,” followed by instructions on how to report the content.