Telegram reverses its stance and joins child safety initiative.

After years of resisting calls to join child protection initiatives, the controversial messaging app Telegram has agreed to collaborate with an internationally recognized organization to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), widely used by major online platforms to detect and remove CSAM, will now partner with Telegram, which had previously declined to engage with such schemes.

However, just four months after Telegram\’s founder Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris for the platform\’s alleged failure to moderate extreme content, Telegram has reversed its position.

The IWF has hailed Telegram\’s decision as \”transformational\” but cautioned that it marks only the beginning of a \”much longer journey\” for the app.

“By joining the IWF, Telegram can begin using our world-leading tools to ensure this material cannot be shared on the platform,” said Derek Ray-Hill, Interim CEO of the IWF.

\”The dark web in your pocket.\”

Telegram, with around 950 million users worldwide, has long marketed itself as an app that prioritizes user privacy over the policy norms followed by other global social media platforms.

However, reports from the BBC and other news outlets have revealed that criminals have used the app to promote drugs, offer cybercrime and fraud services, and, more recently, share child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This led one expert to label it as \”the dark web in your pocket.\”

In August, Telegram\’s billionaire owner, Pavel Durov, was detained at an airport near Paris. He faces accusations of failing to cooperate with law enforcement in cases involving drug trafficking, child sexual content, and fraud. French judges have prohibited the 40-year-old from leaving the country while investigations continue.

Telegram argues that Durov’s arrest is unjust, asserting that he should not be held responsible for the actions of users on the platform. Nonetheless, the company has since made several operational changes, including:

• Committing to hand over IP addresses and phone numbers of rule violators to authorities in response to valid legal requests
• Disabling features like \”people nearby,\” which had been exploited by bots and scammers
• Publishing regular transparency reports detailing content removal, a practice it had previously resisted

Durov has pledged to transform Telegram’s moderation from a point of criticism to one of praise.

The partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) marks the latest step in this shift. The IWF is one of the few organizations legally authorized to search for and remove child sexual abuse content, and its regularly updated list helps websites identify and block such material.

Before joining the IWF, Telegram claimed to remove hundreds of thousands of abuse-related materials each month using its own systems. Membership with the IWF is expected to enhance these efforts.

While Telegram is marketed as an end-to-end encrypted messaging service—meaning only the sender and recipient can read messages, similar to WhatsApp and Signal—the majority of communications on the platform use standard encryption, raising concerns about the app’s vulnerability to hacking and interception.

Durov, who was born in Russia and now resides in Dubai, holds citizenship in Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and St. Kitts and Nevis. Telegram is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet states, as well as in Iran.