Telegram Ignored Requests To Remove Child Porn

August 28, 2024 Crime, Social Media

Before Telegram’s CEO was arrested in France, the app had gained a reputation for ignoring advocacy groups fighting child exploitation.

Three of those groups, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, all told NBC News that their outreach to Telegram about child sexual abuse material, often shorthanded as CSAM, on the platform has largely been ignored.

Pavel Durov, a co-founder and the CEO of Telegram, a messaging and news app that’s widely used in former Soviet countries and has become increasingly popular with the U.S. far right and groups banned from other platforms, remains in the custody of French authorities, who arrested him Saturday.

Read the full article. Telegram’s own TOS declares “we do not process any requests” related to illegal content.

New: Three leading child safety groups each tell me that Telegram, unlike every other major platform, has been completely ignoring all their requests to work with them to take down CSAM. Potential context to Durov’s arrest.https://t.co/pTyClsRHeJ

— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) August 28, 2024