Telegram has quickly become an essential instant messenger for hundreds of millions of people around the world. If Telegram’s problem is not popularity, the application has another problem: moderation. French authorities (like those of many countries) accuse Telegram and its creator Pavel Durov of a lax attitude towards illegal content and those that violate copyright. However, this could soon change, Telegram is preparing to adopt a dissuasive approach against users who do not respect the rules of use.
For many users, Telegram is the perfect app to stream football matches illegally, sell drugs, share child pornography… However, all this will soon change since Telegram moderation will now collaborate with the French authorities and all others who will request specific information about a user.
The first step for Telegram in this new moderation is to strengthen its human teams, the application has made extensive use of artificial intelligence to reduce moderation costs, however, Pavel Durov would have come to the realization that there is nothing better than a team of humans who analyze thousands of contents shared in channels every day.
Another action of this moderation 2.0 is the arrival of procedures for sharing IP addresses and phone numbers of users targeted by police investigations. Until today, a police officer who tried to get information on a Telegram user to advance his investigation would no longer even make the request to the application, because he knew full well that it would not be cooperative.
Now, if the police ask for information about a user, Telegram will immediately provide the user’s IP address and the phone number with which they created their account. Of course, end-to-end encrypted content will remain that way and nothing will be shared with the authorities, but even if Telegram did, it would be useless since it requires a decryption key that Telegram does not have.
This strategy is well thought out to reduce illegal content on Telegram, because moderating billions of messages that pass through the application each month is not easy, but making users think that they are no longer protected and that the application will not hesitate to denounce them is much more effective!
This is what Pavel Durov says:
This should discourage criminals. Telegram search is for finding friends or finding out the news, not for promoting illegal things.
Apparently, the arrest of Pavel Durov by the French authorities seems to have set the record straight in Telegram’s policy. Until now, the application was the ideal environment for criminals, but from now on, it will be a platform to avoid for dishonest people.
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