Original article (in Croatian) was published on 27/8/2024; Author: Anja Vladisavljević
Even before Telegram’s founder was arrested, journalistic investigations revealed that illegal content such as child or revenge pornography, as well as war propaganda, hatred and disinformation, were being spread through the application.
“Enough with the impunity of Telegram”, said the French investigator dealing with the case of Pavel Durov, the founder of the well-known platform, who was arrested at the Paris airport last weekend, as reported by the media. According to French web portals (1, 2), the arrest is related to the platform’s work.
French public television France 24 reported, citing an unnamed source, that OFMIN, the police department in charge of preventing violence against minors, “issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, online violence, organized crime and promotion of terrorism”.
A day after this news resounded from Europe, a similar one arrived from another continent. India is also investigating Telegram’s role in criminal activities such as extortion and gambling. The Indian government also reported launching an investigation against the platform, and its shutdown is possible, depending on the findings, writes The Times of India.
Messaging application Telegram, with over 900 million users, has positioned itself as a “neutral” alternative to similar American-owned platforms, which have been criticized for commercial exploitation of users’ personal data. Those who have heard of it, or use it, perceive it as an application that provides a higher level of security and discretion. This perception is also contributed to by the fact that Durov left his native country Russia in 2014 because he did not comply with the demands of the local authorities to delete “inappropriate” accounts on the VKontakte platform, which he developed before Telegram.
The idea of encrypted communication, allegedly inaccessible to authorities, telecommunications service providers and other private entities, for various reasons, attracts more and more users. Telegram is an important means of communication for journalists, activists and opposition groups, especially in countries with strong citizen surveillance. Among other reasons, some observers, such as the exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden, described Durov’s arrest as an attack on freedom of speech.
However, the application is also used for criminal activities: smuggling and illegal trade, terrorist actions, incitement to hatred and violence, and dissemination of violent or illegal digital content. In the midst of the wars being waged today, it is a powerful means of spreading war propaganda.
Many details about the Telegram case are still unknown
Durov, who currently holds both French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, is the co-founder of the app, which has been around since 2013. Reacting to the arrest, Telegram said its CEO “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe” and complies with European Union laws, including the Digital Services Act (DSA).
“It is absurd to claim that the platform or its owner is responsible for the misuse of that platform. Almost a billion users worldwide use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of vital information. We are waiting for a quick solution to this situation. Telegram is with all of you”, reveals the statement published on the platform’s official Telegram channel.
The European Commission has confirmed that this situation has nothing to do with DSA, an EU regulation that deals with the protection of the digital space and the rights of all users of digital services, including social networks and platforms.
“Criminal prosecution is not among the possible sanctions for violating the DSA. It does not define what is illegal or establish any criminal offence and therefore cannot be invoked to make arrests. Only national [or international] laws that define them can be invoked as a criminal offence. We are carefully following the developments regarding Telegram and are ready to cooperate with the French authorities if this is relevant”, a Commission spokesperson told Euronews.
“The attack on Russia”
Russia, which took control of his first company, and due to which Durov founded Telegram in exile, is now expressing concern. The media there reported on the absurdity of the accusations against him and see the attack on Telegram as an attack on Russia. The Russian embassy in France “immediately took the necessary steps” to clarify the situation. Tensions between France and Russia have been rising for months, with Paris alleging that Moscow ran disinformation campaigns during recent elections and later the Olympics.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on the other hand, claims that this is not a politically motivated procedure.
“It is up to the judiciary, completely independently, to implement the law. The arrest of Telegram’s president on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision”, he wrote on X.
While speculations about the timing of the arrest are rising (for example, that Durov met with Vladimir Putin in Azerbaijan), details about the investigation itself are still lacking. On Monday, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced to the public that Durov was arrested as part of an investigation against an unnamed person launched in July by the cybercrime office unit. The investigation includes a dozen charges that include complicity in fraud, distribution of juvenile pornography, sale of narcotics and refusal to cooperate with investigative authorities.
“Private” groups with thousands of members
Even before the platform came under the scrutiny of French investigators, the public talked about its misuse. Telegram has become suitable for financial fraud, forwarding stolen personal data and those from bank accounts. In Lithuania, Germany and the Netherlands, several cases of illegal drug trade were discovered, which also took place via Telegram.
Several journalistic investigations have revealed that child pornography and other illicit sexually explicit content can be traded through Telegram.
We don’t have to look for brutal examples of sexual abuse and violation of privacy through Telegram on the other side of the world. The Balkan Research and Reporting Network (BIRN) conducted research last year, following the Telegram application for several months. It was able to identify 16 active groups that share private photos and videos of girls from all over the region with thousands of other users every day. Inside were materials that had been recorded without permission, stolen from social networks, or those that had previously been sent to only one person, in confidence.
BIRN’s research showed that users of some groups shared such content for months or years without sanctions, although illegal sexual content, such as materials with sexual abuse of children and publication of sexually explicit content without consent, is not allowed on Telegram. Telegram shut down 13 groups only after BIRN’s journalist sent the list to the administrators, but soon new ones started to appear.
Telegram is still popular among Balkan predators, as shown by a similar survey conducted this year. Activists and members of the OsnaZene association from Serbia infiltrated Telegram groups where child, revenge and incest pornography are shared or sold. They discovered that over 10,000 messages are sent to dozens of such groups every day. However, none of these groups were deleted. The lack of moderation and Telegram’s rather simple removal policy (it only deals with publicly available content to some extent) will allow them to operate smoothly.
Telegram does not currently fall under the European DSA, which, among other things, regulates content moderation, because it applies to all platforms that have more than 45 million users in the European Union (according to current estimates, there are 41 million users within the EU platform).
War propaganda and disinformation
Telegram is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union. As Faktograf already wrote, it experienced great growth after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It emerged, according to France 24, as “a key platform used by pro-war bloggers to justify Moscow’s invasion and spread disinformation in Ukraine and the West”. It is also present in Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who uses it to publish his statements, videos or photos from destroyed cities in Ukraine.
At the beginning of this year, it was discovered that it was being used by the Israeli army, in the middle of the war it is waging in the Palestinian Gaza Strip. As revealed by the web portal Haaretz, members of the Israeli army, a special unit in charge of “psychological warfare against the enemy and foreign audiences”, opened a Telegram channel, two days after the start of the war, without official approval. On it, they shared graphic content such as pictures of dead bodies and the destruction of Gaza, encouraging followers to share them.
Telegram is very similar to other messaging applications (WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Signal), but it is increasingly perceived and used as a social network. In addition to group chats that can receive up to 200,000 users, there is the possibility to follow and open channels on Telegram. It is very easy for channel administrators to spread information because, as a rule, communication is one-way, simple and unobstructed. Ordinary subscribers of the channel have only a few options: react to the published post or, possibly, comment on it.
The free flow of content on Telegram is not hindered by moderators or independent fact-checkers with whom other social networks (Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and TikTok) have partnered to reduce the reach of the spread of disinformation. Therefore, in recent years, Telegram has become a real oasis for disinformation spreaders.
Domestic disinformation exists in such an oasis. Web portals, individuals or groups of users previously known to Faktograf for spreading such content have their followers on Telegram as well. Many of them redirect their users from other social networks, such as Facebook, which has stronger mechanisms to suppress the spread of false claims, to Telegram (1, 2, 3, 4).
Although several studies have been published (1, 2, 3) that show how citizens of the European Union are included in disinformation campaigns through Telegram, the EU still does not have much room for action.
Neither do individual users because Telegram’s terms of service do not contain a single reference to not allowing disinformation on the platform. It is impossible to report disinformation or fake news to the moderators because that category does not even exist.
Telegram mainly guarantees impunity in addition to “privacy”.
