The changes come one month after Durov was arrested in Paris on charges that his platform was complicit in illicit activity on the app and that it refused to cooperate with authorities. Durov is currently out on bail and can’t leave France.
Durov had previously gotten strong support of right-wing free speech advocates including X owner Elon Musk over his longstanding refusal to give governments access to his platform’s data. The promise to keep data confidential has attracted everyone from organized crime cartels to political dissident groups in repressive regimes and the Russian and Ukrainian military to use Telegram.
The Russian-born tech entrepreneur said on Telegram that the platform’s search function was “abused” to sell illegal goods. He added that a team of moderators has made the function “much safer” over the last weeks.
Telegram will also publish more frequent transparency reports, sharing data on how often it cooperated with authorities. The new privacy policy says that this will happen quarterly instead of every six months.