LONDON: Telegram boss Pavel Durov has publicly addressed what he calls the “misguided” charges brought against him by French authorities, defending his platform and leadership in his first comments since his arrest.

In a social media post on Thursday, Durov criticized the judicial inquiry that led to preliminary charges and accused him of allowing Telegram to be used for criminal activities.

Those charges came as part of an investigation into the platform’s alleged complicity in the publication of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking.

Durov, who holds UAE, French and Russian citizenship, said the legal case should target the platform, not its CEO.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” he said.

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

While acknowledging that Telegram faced challenges due to its rapid growth, Durov said it was not “some sort of anarchic paradise” and that the company’s efforts to moderate harmful content included removing millions of posts daily and publishing transparency reports.

The platform was working with NGOs to address urgent moderation issues, which had become a “personal goal,” and more updates would be published soon, he said.

Durov was detained by French authorities at Le Bourget airport in Paris last month and questioned for four days.

He was released on €5 million ($5.55 million) bail but is required to report to a police station twice a week. The UAE government has engaged with French authorities on the matter.

Durov said that while in police detention he “was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram. This was surprising for several reasons.”

The platform had an official representative in the European Union who replied to EU requests and had a public email address, he said.

“Authorities had numerous ways to reach me for assistance.”

He continued: “As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.”

He acknowledged the challenge of creating “a consistent global process” and said that finding the right balance between privacy and security had been difficult due to varying legislation.

“We’ve been committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance … All of that does not mean Telegram is perfect … But we’ve always been open to dialogue.”

With AP

LONDON: Google was slammed Friday by UK regulators who say it’s taking advantage of its dominance in digital advertising to thwart competition in Britain, ratcheting up pressure that the tech giant is facing on both sides of the Atlantic over its “ad tech” business practices.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said that the US company gives preference to its own services to the detriment of online publishers and advertisers in Britain’s 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) digital ad market.
Google is a major player throughout the digital ad ecosystem, providing servers for publishers to manage ad space on their websites and apps, tools for advertisers and media agencies to buy display ads, and an exchange where both sides come together to buy and sell ads in real time at auctions.
“We’ve provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites,” the watchdog’s interim executive director of enforcement, Juliette Enser, said in a press release.
The watchdog’s charges, known as a statement of objections, come two years after it opened its investigation. The European Union’s antitrust authorities have also been Google’s ad bidding services while and it has also been the focus of a state-led antitrust lawsuit against Google that’s set to go to trial this month.
The CMA said that Google’s “anti-competitive” conduct is ongoing, but the company disputed the allegations Friday.
“Google remains committed to creating value for our publisher and advertiser partners in this highly competitive sector,” the company said in a prepared statement. “The core of this case rests on flawed interpretations of the ad tech sector. We disagree with the CMA’s view and we will respond accordingly.”
The UK watchdog alleged Google has been exploiting its dominance since 2015 to strengthen the market position of its own AdX ad exchange and protect it from rivals. AdX is where Google charges the highest fees in the ad tech system, taking about 20 percent of the amount from bids, the CMA said.
The regulator’s accusations include charges that Google manipulates advertiser bids so they have higher value when they go into AdX auctions then rival exchanges. AdX also gets to bid first in auctions run by Google’s publisher ad server, potentially shutting out rivals from the chance to bid, the watchdog said.
Google now has the chance to reply to the charges. The CMA said its considering what is needed to make sure Google ceases the anti-competitive practices. It has the power to impose a fine worth up to 10 percent of a company’s annual worldwide revenue.