After the CEO’s imprisonment, Telegram will begin monitoring private conversations.

Telegram has discreetly altered its FAQ page, eliminating a statement that indicated private chats were exempt from moderation requests. This modification follows the recent arrest of CEO Pavel Durov in France, where he was accused of allowing “criminal activity to persist unchecked on the messaging app.”

Earlier today, Durov released his first public statements since his arrest, vowing to enhance content moderation on the platform—a significant change from the company’s earlier stance that he had “nothing to hide.”

In his statement shared on Thursday, Durov noted, “The rapid surge in Telegram’s user base to 950 million has led to challenges that facilitated criminal exploitation of our platform. Therefore, I have made it my mission to ensure we make substantial improvements in this area. We have already initiated this process internally, and I will provide further updates on our progress shortly.”

Some of these changes seem to be already underway, as the FAQ page has been updated within the last 24 hours. One section, formerly titled, “There’s illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?” has seen a substantial revision.

As of September 5th, Telegram’s answer to this inquiry stated: “All Telegram chats and group chats are secret amongst their parties. We do not process any requests related to them.”

However, at the time of this writing, that language has been removed. It has now been replaced with: “All Telegram apps feature ‘Report’ buttons that allow you to flag illegal content for our moderators—needing just a few taps,” observed by guidance on how to report messages.

Durov’s arrest occurred as French authorities filed preliminary charges, alleging that the messaging platform was being utilized for the distribution of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking and that the company had declined to assist investigators, according to the Associated Press.

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