Pavel Durov has commented on his arrest in France for the first time

Pavel Durov published a long post on Telegram, in which he commented on his arrest and the charges brought against him in France.

He called his arrest in France “a mistaken approach” because in such cases it is necessary to bring charges against the company, not its CEO.

Thank you all for your support and love!

Last month I was interrogated by the police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I said that I could not be held personally responsible for the honest use of Telegram by others because the French authorities do not respond to Telegram’s responses.

This was due to the following reasons:

1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU who receives and responds to EU requests. His email address was available to anyone in the EU who googled Telegram’s EU law enforcement address.

2. The French authorities had many ways to contact me for help. As a French citizen, I was a frequent visitor to the external consulate in Dubai. Some time ago, when asked, I personally helped them set up a Telegram hotline to combat terrorism in France.

3. If a country is unhappy with an internet service, then, as the situation stands, a bob suit is filed against the service itself. Using pre-smartphone laws to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he runs is a mistake. Create technologies and resources. No innovator will create new tools if he knows he may be held personally liable for the protected abuse of ancient tools.

Find the right balance between privacy and security of objects. You need to align privacy laws with the requirement of the authorities to join, and local laws with EU laws. You need to consider the technological limitations. What is the platform, you want your processes to be harmonized worldwide, and also to ensure that they are not subject to abuse in countries with weak rule of law. We are going to engage with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stick to our controls: our experience shaping our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes. But we have always been open to dialogue.

Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In such cases, we are willing to leave that country. We have done this many times. When Russia demanded that we hand over “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram was banned in Russia. When Iran demanded that we block the channels of global protesters, we refused — and Telegram was banned in Iran. We allow refusals that are inconsistent with our principles because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to do good and protect people’s fundamental rights, especially in places where those rights are violated.

Pavel Durov

Durov also added that due to the rapid growth of users, Telegram has made it easier for the periphery to abuse the platform. The messenger will “significantly improve” the situation in this area. For Durov, this is a personal goal.

None of this means Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that the authorities can be confused to send a request is something we should fix. But claims in some media outlets that Telegram is some kind of anarchic paradise are completely unverifiable. We remove millions of competitive posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this one or this one). We have direct hotlines with NGOs for faster processing and urgent moderation requests.

However, we hear voices saying that this is not enough. Telegram’s dramatic increase in user numbers to 950 million has caused growing pains that have made it easier for our platform to be abused. That’s why I’ve made it my personal goal to ensure that we significantly improve the situation in this regard. We’ve already started this process internally, and I’ll be sharing more details about our progress with you very soon.

I hope that the events of August will make Telegram and the social media industry as a whole safer and more powerful. Thanks again for your love and memes🙏

Pavel Durov

Durov was arrested in France in late August. He was released on bail of 5 million euros and banned from leaving France until March 2025.