It's a world first: Pavel Durov, CEO of the social media network Telegram, was arrested upon arrival in France on Saturday, August 24, as part of an investigation into how his mobile application may have been used by criminals and terrorists. Until then, this very particular app had been able to grow with a certain impunity, despite its creator's refusal to collaborate with governments in both totalitarian and democratic countries.
A rather unique way of working
Is it a messaging service, a social network or a blogging platform? Telegram is a bit of all three. The app combines a fairly classic message exchange service, similar to WhatsApp or Messenger, along with discussion groups and channels. Users can create channels where only the administrator can publish messages, with or without comments, as well as discussion groups that can bring up to 200,000 people together.
These multiple functionalities mean the app is often central to its users' lives, as they use it to get information, chat with loved ones or publish long messages for their subscribers. Other messenger apps such as WhatsApp have tried to introduce "channel" functionalities, but they are not as widely used as Telegram's.
A very popular app... in some countries
With over 900 million claimed users worldwide, Telegram is a social media heavyweight, even if it remains far behind WhatsApp (three billion users). But this figure conceals major disparities between countries: ubiquitous in Russia, Ukraine and most of the former USSR, the application is much less widely used in Western Europe and the rest of the world. In France, the number of users is estimated at around one million.
This weaker presence in the European Union is, however, also an asset for Telegram: with, officially, "only" 41 million active users in Europe, the service doesn't reach the 45 million threshold that would place it among the "very large platforms" that have specific moderation obligations, accompanied by heavy fines in the event of breaches, under the European Digital Services Act (DSA) regulations.
Virtually no moderation
This is, perhaps, Telegram's main distinctive feature: the app boasts that it never censors its users, cooperates very little with judicial requisitions and poses as a champion of freedom of expression. This has led Telegram to invest in technologies that make it extremely difficult to block, making it one of the few communication tools readily available in countries like Iran. It is also favored by political opponents in totalitarian states, including Russia.
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