Telegram founder: French intelligence agencies have pressured content censorship, and Telegram will commit to freedom of expression

Telegram founder Pavel Durov wrote that when I was detained in Paris about a year ago, the French intelligence service contacted me through an intermediary and asked me to help the Moldovan government censor certain Telegram channels ahead of the presidential election. After reviewing channels flagged by the French and Moldovan authorities, we found that some of them were in clear violation of our rules and deleted them. The intermediary then informed me that in return for cooperation, the French intelligence service would "put in a good word" to the judge who ordered my arrest last August. This was unacceptable on multiple levels. If the agency did approach the judge, it constituted interference with the judicial process. If the agency falsely claims to have access to judges, then it is using my legal situation in France to influence the political situation in Eastern Europe - we have observed a similar pattern in Romania. Soon after, the Telegram team received a second list of so-called "problem" Moldovan channels. Unlike the first, these channels are almost all legal and fully compliant with our rules. The only thing they have in common is the expression of political views that the French and Moldovan governments do not like. We rejected this request. Telegram is committed to freedom of expression. I will continue to expose any attempts to force Telegram to censor our platform.