Following his recent arrest in France, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov seems to be changing his tune as authorities close in on silencing him and his encrypted messaging platform for free speech violations.
Suddenly, Durov is on board with complying with government demands that he police the Telegram platform for "problematic content" that the powers the be (TPTB) do not want to spread online.
In a personal message to the 13 million subscribers on his personal Telegram channel, Durov announced that his platform "has been abused by people who violated our terms of service to sell illegal goods," and that action is now being taken to address it.
"Over the past few weeks," Durov wrote, Telegram employees have been using artificial intelligence (AI) to comb through the platform in search of "all the problematic content," all of which he says was "identified in Search (and) is no longer accessible."
From now on, Durov continued, anyone identified as using Telegram for illegal purposes will have their details shared with government authorities "in response to valid legal requests." Such details include internet IP addresses and phone numbers.
"We won't let bad actors jeopardise the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users," Durov added.
(Related: Check out our earlier coverage to learn more about how the recent arrest of Pavel Durov represents an assault by the globalists on everyone who values free speech.)
Western authorities destroying Telegram
These changes, which are now enshrined in Telegram's terms and conditions, come on the heels of Durov's August 24 arrest at Le Bourget airport outside of Paris. Durov was picked up by the authorities for not doing enough, in their opinion, to silence free speech on Telegram.
After several days of intense questioning, Durov was charged with several counts of failing to curb "extremist" and "terrorist" content on Telegram. He was released on a five-million-euro (about $5.6 million) bail.
As the investigation into Durov continues, he must remain in France and report to police twice a week. It would seem as though his time in French captivity has already had the effect of causing him to cave on free speech and send Telegram down the same path as Facebook and other social media platforms before it.
At first, Durov was highly critical of his arrest. Now, Durov is talking and acting in the ways Western authorities are demanding, which just goes to show the power they wield to control even the richest and most powerful people in the world and force them to do their bidding.
On September 6, Durov revealed that Telegram will now alter its "people nearby" feature to only present users with "legitimate businesses" rather than "bots and scammers."
"This year we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise," he said ominously as if turning to the dark side is some kind of good thing.
Durov, who rarely speaks in public, boasts a $15.5 billion fortune, according to Forbes magazine. He leads what the media describes as "an ascetic life" of taking ice baths and avoiding both alcohol and coffee.
Compared to all the other messaging and social media platforms out there, Telegram was one of the best, collecting very little data on its users. That appears to be changing, though, now that Western authorities are involved in controlling the platform's future.
"Don't buy this bogus story," one commenter wrote about the matter.
"Our government is censoring and banning every media that is not controlled by Maryland; except for Telegram. They can't shut it down. So, they are going to put the fear of God on the feeble minds, and have them delete the app. Telegram is open source and supports reproducible builds. Anyone can independently verify the code. Unlike backdoor apps such as Meta's apps (all of them), and until recently, Twitter."
The latest news about the globalist assault on free speech can be found at Censorship.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.