Telegram has been in the headlines for quite some time now. On August 25, CEO and founder Pavel Durov was arrested for allowing criminal activities on the messaging app. While Durov rejected the claims, Telegram has taken steps to take action. Recently, it has been observed that the company is tightening the moderation a bit. On a previous FAQ’s page, the company mentioned that private chats are protected from moderation requests. But that is no longer the case. The statement has been removed. As of September 5, Telegram’s response page said, “All Telegram chats and group chats are private between their participants. We do not process any requests related to them.” But the statement had already been removed when this article was being written.

Instead, it now says, “All Telegram apps have a ‘Report’ button that lets you flag illegal content to our moderators – in just a few taps,” followed by instructions on how to report the content.

Although the option to report was always present, following the arrest of the CEO due to lack of moderation on the platform, the process for reporting chats has been more clearly displayed in Telegram’s FAQ section.

In another section, it also explains what Telegram thinks about internet privacy. Here’s what it thinks.

Rumors of the end of encryption on Telegram

There are rumours that Telegram may end end-to-end encryption on the platform, but the company has dismissed these reports as “false rumours”. “These false rumours are spreading due to a recent update to the FAQ. The change to the FAQ has only clarified how to report content on Telegram, including through Europe’s DSA,” the company said in a statement. “You can report messages from any Telegram group to moderators, this works the same as forwarding. Private chats are still private – however you can always report a new incoming chat to moderators using Block > Report. Anyone can check Telegram’s open source code and see that there have been no changes to how Telegram operates,” the company said.

Accusations on Twitter

Telegram’s large group capacity can accommodate up to 2,00,000 members. This may sound appealing, but it is a major concern among critics. They believe it creates an easy way to spread fake news and provides a platform for users to share harmful content, including conspiracy theories, hate speech, child abuse material, and terrorism-related content.

The Telegram app has come under criticism in Britain for harboring far-right channels that played a key role in coordinating violent unrest in several English cities last month, leading to increased scrutiny of it and calls for greater accountability.

In his statement, Pavel Durov acknowledged that the “sudden increase” in the number of users on the messaging app – which he put at 950 million – has “led to increasing problems, making it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

Arrest of CEO Pavel Durov

Last month, Telegram’s founder and CEO was arrested for allowing illegal content to flow on the app. According to reports, French authorities issued an arrest warrant in a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes including fraud, drug trafficking, cyber bullying, organised crime and promoting terrorism.

Recently, Durov posted his first comments since the arrest on his Telegram channel. He started by calling the arrest both “misleading” and “surprising.” One thing he said was, if French authorities had released the service, they should have contacted the company. The current rule states that in such cases, legal action should be taken against the service, not the CEO. “Using laws that predate the smartphone era to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” he said.

He further added that the title of the app being a “chaos paradise” is not true. Telegram is not perfect, but “there are claims in some media that Telegram is some kind of chaos paradise, which is absolutely false. We remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he said.

While removing end-to-end encryption for private chats may be a step towards curbing such alleged activities, it indicates that Telegram also feels that a lot of criminal activities are taking place on the app.