Telegram to drop ‘people nearby’ feature and improve moderation

The chief executive of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has announced the messaging app will improve moderation on the platform and has removed some features that have been used for illegal activity.

The app’s founder unveiled the changes on Friday hours after calling his arrest by the French authorities last month “misguided”. Durov has since been charged with allegedly allowing criminal activity on the app.

In a post on X, he said the messaging app was “committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise”.

The changes announced by Durov included removing the app’s “people nearby” feature, which he said had “issues with bots and scammers”, and replacing it with “businesses nearby”, featuring legitimate businesses; and disabling media uploads on the app’s blogging tool, Telegraph, which Durov said was being “misused by anonymous actors”.

The Verge, a tech news site, also reported that Telegram has removed references on its FAQ page to private chats being protected and that requests to moderate them would not be processed. A spokesperson told the site that the app’s source code had not changed but users could report a new chat to moderators.

Durov added that Telegram’s nearly 1 billion users had been let down by a minority.

The 39-year-old, who was born in Russia and also holds French citizenship, was detained in France in August as part of an investigation into crimes related to child sexual abuse images, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions associated with the app.

“While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” he said.

Durov added that Telegram had reached 10 million paid subscribers.

Durov made the post on X after he used his Telegram channel to make his first public comments since his detention last month. He called his arrest “misguided” and denied any suggestion the app was an “anarchic paradise”.

Durov said the investigation into the app was surprising in that the French authorities had access to a “hot line” he had helped set up and could have contacted Telegram’s EU representative at any time.

Related: What is Telegram and why has its founder Pavel Durov been arrested?

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” he wrote. “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

He added: “But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day.”

Durov, who is worth $9bn, avoided being held in jail before the case was heard with €5m bail. He was granted release on condition that he reports to a police station twice a week and remains in France.

On Friday, Moscow officials confirmed previous reports that Durov had declined offers of diplomatic assistance from Russia after the arrest.

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said that Russian diplomats in Paris had taken all “necessary actions” regarding Durov’s detention, but he had declined any offers of diplomatic help.

“For any questions about Durov’s decisions on which side he prioritises in this matter, please contact his lawyers,” Zakharova told the RTVI outlet.

Durov also holds Emirati and Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship.

His arrest has escalated tensions between Russia and France, with some lawmakers in Moscow claiming that Paris was attempting to pressure the Telegram founder into handing over the app’s encryption keys to western intelligence agencies.

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin expressed surprise over France’s actions against Durov, calling them “selective in nature”. In his first public comments on Durov since the arrest, the Russian president said he had met the Telegram founder only once, “years ago”, and they had not stayed in contact.