“The claims of some media outlets that Telegram is some kind of anarchic paradise are completely false. We remove millions of dangerous messages and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports. We have contact lines with NGOs to be able to act quickly on urgent moderation requests.”
In a message published on Thursday, September 5, the first since his arrest and indictment by the French courts, Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, assures that he does not understand. Why is the French courts accusing him of complicity with the people who used his platform to distribute illegal content? Telegram moderates content, he swears, and even moderates a lot of it.
Yet all you have to do is open the app, which claims 950 million users worldwide, and perform basic searches to find all types of illegal products and services, on a scale that is out of all proportion to what happens on other platforms. Mr. Durov half-heartedly acknowledged this in another message published late Friday, assuring that his teams would pass Telegram’s moderation “from a reason for criticism to a reason for congratulations”.
Read the story | Article reserved for our subscribers Pavel Durov’s Arrest in France: The Story of a Resounding Week
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Stolen cars, counterfeit money and real crooks
The Telegram teams – of whom we know nothing, including their number and location – may have a lot to do. A few minutes on the application are enough to find channels selling, here, a Magnum 44 with its ammunition (3,000 euros, to be found in Lyon), there, counterfeit banknotes (100 euros for 35 fake 20-euro notes, “All tested before being sold, that’s why we are the best!”). In three clicks, you can access a channel with over 7,000 subscribers, which offers stolen vehicles for sale without much discretion. A BMW i8 is listed there for 12,000 euros, less than 10% of the new price – fake license plates included.
Guaranteed discreet delivery
Need a fake registration card to go with your stolen vehicle? There’s a Telegram channel for that too: « Impression HQ [haute qualité]100% real text font, hologram »boasts the administrator, with photos to support his claim. He also offers fake ID cards, fake diplomas and fake residence permits for a few hundred euros. Guaranteed discreet delivery to a relay point throughout France.
Of course, some of these offers are also likely scams: there is no guarantee that orders placed in these anonymous stores, where payment is often made in cryptocurrencies or through exotic payment services, will be honored. Because Telegram is also the platform par excellence for scams, particularly fake investments and shady crypto assets. The vast majority of ads present in the application also refer to accounts offering dubious investments, such as this Trading crypto France group, whose ads have been very present for several months in Telegram.
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