Telegram CEO Durov blames EU, Soros for attempted surveillance

Telegram founder and owner Pavel Durov has accused the European Union of attempting to justify increased surveillance and censorship through controlled NGOs and media outlets.

In a post on his Telegram channel, Durov claimed that the European NGO AI Forensics is funded by George Soros and operates on behalf of the European Commission, Caliber.Az reports.

According to Durov, AI Forensics “is telling us that Telegram is a PROBLEM because people can discuss content from OTHER social media in PRIVATE telegram groups.”

Durov also shared a screenshot from a France24 report citing an AI Forensics study, which stated that nearly 25,000 Telegram users were involved in distributing and selling child pornography, sexualized deepfakes, and non-consensual images of naked women.

The study suggested that these materials originated from other popular social networks, with Telegram acting as a connecting hub.

“The crazy narrative of this "non-governmental" organisation is distributed by globalist outlets (El País, Der Spiegel, Wired) and AFP (France’s “ITAR-TASS”), which is carbon-copied by the “free” French press (Le Parisien, 20 Minutes, Ouest-France, Le Figaro),” Durov wrote.

He added that such attempts to manipulate public opinion must be stopped, “because they are used to take away what's left of our freedoms.”

In a comment to SecurityLab, the Telegram team said that the reliance of sexualized content communities on other social networks highlights the absence of recommendation algorithms within the messenger that would help such groups grow internally.

They also noted that this points to Telegram’s “proactive search moderation.”

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov