Telegram partners with child safety group to scan content for sexual abuse material

Telegram, which for years has had a reputation as a platform used to trade child sexual abuse material, has for the first time agreed to partner with a larger international watch group to combat such content.

The U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, which maintains a database of known abuse imagery and provides tools for tech platforms to automatically flag and remove it, announced a partnership with Telegram on Tuesday.

Telegram’s enigmatic co-founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, remains free on bail in France after he was arrested in August as part of a larger sweep that included allegations of the platform’s “complicity” in several illegal schemes, including distributing explicit images of the abuse of minors.

With the new partnership, the IWF can effectively scan Telegram for exact matches of child sexual abuse material in its databases and automatically block it, the IWF said in a news release. Similar tools will also block links to sites known to host such content and identify artificial intelligence-created abuse imagery.

Before Durov was arrested, Telegram, based in Dubai, had a unique reputation as being overtly hostile to moderation and court orders from governments to either turn over information about users suspected of crimes or to follow orders to remove content.

While that approach helped it gain favor with some groups that say they advocate for uncensored speech, including the U.S. far right, it has also frustrated child safety groups.

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While Telegram says it removes channels that host child sexual abuse material daily, the three largest groups that work internationally with law enforcement and tech platforms — the IWF, the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection — told NBC News this year that it was unique in refusing for years to even respond to their attempts to flag and remove images of child sexual abuse.

Durov’s case is still pending, but it appears to have persuaded him to take steps to improve trust and safety on his platform. Less than two weeks after he was arrested, he announced that he would “significantly improve” moderation on Telegram.

Telegram didn’t respond to a request for comment. Its head of media relations, Remi Vaughn, said in the release that the partnership would “further ensure that Telegram can continue to effectively delete child abuse materials before they can reach any users.”

The IWF’s interim CEO, Derek Ray-Hill, said that means “Telegram can begin deploying our world-leading tools to help make sure this material cannot be shared on the service. It is an important moment, and we will be working hard with Telegram to make sure this commitment continues and expands to the whole sector.”

“This is a transformational first step on a much longer journey,” Ray-Hill said.