Telegram’s hands-off approach to content faces a reckoning

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The recent arrest of Telegram founder and chief executive officer Pavel Durov at Le Bourget airport near Paris

ultra-lax approach to oversight and growing concern about Telegram’s role in enabling criminal activity. The charges are extensive and serious, covering Telegram’s complicity in the distribution of child sexual-abuse material (CSAM), drug trafficking and money laundering.

Mr Durov’s arrest should also be taken as a sign that the “no consequences” era for social media is fading as governments push to make companies more accountable for what happens on their apps.

While its peers invest heavily in content moderation and cooperate with law enforcement, Telegram has a minimal-intervention policy that has contributed to its low operational costs. Mr Durov once told the Financial Times that each Telegram user cost the company just 70 US cents a year to support.

During the recent UK riots, calls to violence proliferated on the platform even though they broke the app’s rules. 

Telegram has proudly maintained a stance of non-cooperation. In its FAQs, the company states “to this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments”. Now, in response to the arrest, Telegram has said it’s “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform. 

Mr Musk and other critics may argue that his arrest threatens free speech, but Telegram’s hands-off approach to much of the activity on its platform doesn’t grant it freedom from consequences. The digital world requires as much governance as the physical one, and when a platform becomes a tool for widespread criminal activity, turning a blind eye isn’t a defence of liberty but a dereliction of duty.

Qn: ‘The mass media today has focused too much on profits, and not enough on responsibility.’ Is this a fair comment? (DHS Prelim 2022)