Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is reportedly in custody after being arrested near Paris Saturday evening as he was departing his private jet. The billionaire was apprehended on a warrant related to a preliminary investigation, writes Reuters. French authorities believe that the platform’s lack of moderation has “allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.” Durov will go before a judge tonight and could be indicted as early as Sunday, according to sources for TF1 TV (which we read using Google Translate), one of two French outlets cited by Reuters.

Telegram has become a critical resource as people turn to it to find crucial information in places where heavy information censorship is common, such as Russia. But Durov’s…

Continue reading…
    • AwesomeLowlander
      link
      fedilink
      English
      525 days ago

      I’m guessing the issue lies in groups which get reported but have no action taken

    • @SpaceMan9000
      link
      English
      224 days ago

      Only private chats are private, don’t think those huge piracy/hacker groups are really private.

      • gfle
        link
        fedilink
        English
        424 days ago

        They aren’t, Telegram is not a secure messenger. There are e2e chats, but those are not groupchats, they are not always available (not on the desktop or using the web client) and in general they are rarely used. All those big groups and channels are unencrypted and there’s nothing stopping the authors from looking into them.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          424 days ago

          Agreed, there is a reason why there’s so much news about telegram. It’s ain’t known for its encryption, and it continues to baffle me why people continue to use it for problematic stuff.

          • gfle
            link
            fedilink
            English
            324 days ago

            I saw the following comment on the orange site:

            Telegram offers end-to-end encryption in the same way that McDonalds offers salads.

            and I really like that take