❤️ Thank you all for your continued support and kindness!

Last month, I was interviewed by French police for four days after arriving in Paris. I was surprised to learn that I might be held personally responsible for illegal activities conducted on Telegram, due to the French authorities' complaints about not receiving responses from Telegram.

Here are a few points of concern:

1. Telegram has a designated representative in the EU who handles and responds to requests from EU authorities. This contact information is publicly available and easy to find online.

2. The French authorities had multiple ways to reach me for assistance. As a French citizen, I regularly visit the French consulate in Dubai and previously helped establish a hotline with Telegram to address terrorism threats in France.

3. If a country has issues with an internet service, the standard procedure is to pursue legal action against the service provider, not the CEO. Holding a CEO responsible for third-party misuse of a platform is not only impractical but also discourages innovation. No one will want to develop new technologies if they fear personal liability for potential misuse.

Balancing privacy with security is challenging. It involves reconciling privacy laws with law enforcement needs, and local regulations with EU standards, all while accounting for technological constraints. As a platform, we strive to maintain consistent processes globally while ensuring they aren't misused in countries with weaker legal frameworks. We are committed to working with regulators to find the right balance. We are guided by our mission to protect users in oppressive regimes but remain open to dialogue.

When disagreements arise with a country’s regulators, we are prepared to exit that market if necessary. For example, we refused to provide “encryption keys” to Russia, leading to a ban, and declined Iran's request to block peaceful protest channels, resulting in another ban. Our mission is driven by the intention to uphold basic rights, not by financial gain.

We recognize that Telegram is not perfect. We are actively working to improve our processes to address the confusion around requests and to tackle the issues brought on by our rapid user growth. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels daily, publish transparency reports, and maintain direct hotlines with NGOs for urgent moderation.

We are dedicated to making Telegram—and the social networking industry as a whole—safer and more robust. I’ll provide updates on our progress soon. Thanks again for your support and the memes! 🙏

#TelegramCEO