Telegram Refuses to Join International Child Protection Schemes

The BBC has learnt that Telegram, the messaging software provider whose CEO has been jailed in France, refuses to participate in international programs geared at detecting and eliminating child abuse content online.

The app is not affiliated with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) or the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), both of which collaborate with major online platforms to identify, report, and delete such content.

It comes as the app’s founder and CEO, who has over 950 million registered users, remains in jail in France.

Billionaire Pavel Durov has been imprisoned on allegations of lack of moderation on the platform.

According to officials, the 39-year-old is suspected of failing to assist with law enforcement in cases involving narcotics trafficking, child se** content, and fraud.

Telegram has previously stated that its moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving”.

However, unlike all other social networks, it is not affiliated with programs such as NCMEC’s CyberTipline, which has over 1,600 internet companies registered.

Although US-based organisations are legally obligated to sign up, 16% of participants are not based in the United States.

Telegram was founded in Russia, but is now headquartered in Dubai, where Mr. Durov lives.

The great majority of child sexual abuse material allegations come from internet giants and social networks such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (X), Snapchat, and WhatsApp.

According to the BBC, NCMEC has frequently asked Telegram to join forces in combating child se* abuse material (CSAM), but the company has declined.

Telegram also refuses to cooperate with the Internet Watch Foundation, the UK’s equivalent of NCMEC.

According to an IWF representative, “despite attempts to proactively engage with Telegram over the last year, they are not members of the IWF and do not take any of our services to block, prevent, and disrupt the sharing of child se** abuse imagery.”

Telegram cannot proactively locate, remove, or ban confirmed CSAM that is classified and added to lists made by charities because it is not a member of IWF or NCMEC.

IWF stated that the company removed CSAM once material was confirmed, but that it was slower and less responsive to daily demands.

The BBC contacted Telegram for comment on its refusal to participate in child protection schemes.

Previously, it stated that it is “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of the platform.”

Telegram is also not a part of the Take It Down initiative, which aims to remove so-called revenge porn.

Snap, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Po***, and Only*** are all part of the system, which uses a hash list to check for photographs and videos on public or unencrypted sites.

Another standard that Telegram does not follow is Transparency Reporting.

Every six months, social networks publish a list of all content removed due to police requests.

Most other social networks, including Meta’s applications, Snapchat, and TikTok, publish their reports online, and previous years are archived for future reference.

Telegram does not have such a website, only a channel on the app with no collection of transparency reports. It also identifies its approach to Transparency Reports as “semiannual”.

A request to see past reports was not responded to by the Telegram Transparency channel, which stated that “no report available for your region”.

Telegram also has an interesting media management system. The contact method is an automated bot on the app, to which this reporter has never received a response in the months since making various requests.

There is an unadvertised email address for press enquiries, which BBC News emailed but has yet to receive a response from.

In June, Pavel Durov informed journalist Tucker Carlson that his platform is handled by only “about 30 engineers”.

Mr Durov, who founded Telegram, was born in Russia and currently resides in Dubai. He holds dual citizenship in the UAE and France.

Telegram is highly popular in Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union countries, as well as Iran.

Source: BBC