App Users Now Have the Option to Report Content on Telegram: CEO Pavel Durov

Nitin Konde, Apoorva Bajj

Sep 9, 2024 — 2 min read

App Users Now Have the Option to Report Content on Telegram: CEO Pavel Durov

For a while now, Telegram has been in the news. The CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, was detained on 25 August on suspicion of permitting unlawful acts on the messaging platform. Despite Durov's denials, Telegram has taken action. The corporation has been seen to be pushing moderation somewhat as of late.

The corporation had previously stated on the prior FAQ page that private chats were shielded from requests to be moderated. However, this is not the case anymore. The statement is no longer available. All Telegram conversations, including group chats, remain private amongst their members, according to Telegram's answer page as of September 5. Requests about them are not handled by the company. This statement has already been removed, though.

The preceding statement has been substituted by the following: All Telegram applications include "Report" buttons that enable users to flag illegal content for our moderators with a few taps. These buttons are followed by instructions on how to report content.

The CEO's arrest for platform moderation led Telegram to make the process of reporting a chat more prominently posted in their FAQ section, while the option to report has always been there.

Speculation That Telegram May Disable Encryption

Telegram has described the accusations as "false rumours" and denied any involvement in the potential termination of end-to-end encryption on the app. A recent modification to the FAQ has caused these rumors to proliferate. According to the company's statement, the modification to the FAQ has merely served to clarify the process of reporting information on Telegram, including through Europe's DSA.

“As an alternative to forwarding, you can always report messages from any Telegram group to the moderators. Private conversations remain private, even though you have the option to notify moderators of a new incoming chat by going to Block > Report. There were no changes to how Telegram runs, as anyone can observe in the open source code," the company claims.

Allegations on Telegram

There is room for up to 2,000,00 members in Telegram's huge group. Despite how appealing it is, this is the main issue that opponents have with it. They think it facilitates the dissemination of false information and gives people a place to talk about controversial topics including child exploitation, conspiracy theories, hate speech, and terrorism.

More attention and demands for greater responsibility have fallen on the Telegram app in the UK after it was found to host far-right channels that were instrumental in organising deadly disruption in multiple English cities last month.

There were growing pains that allowed criminals to more easily abuse our platform, as Pavel Durov acknowledged in his message, due to the "abrupt increase" (which he estimated at 950 million) in the number of users of the messaging app.