Messaging app Telegram will introduce new tools to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse images after teaming up with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK-based charity announced on Wednesday.
The social media platform, which claims more than 950 million monthly active users, will use tools and data from the IWF “to detect, disrupt, remove and block images of child sexual abuse”, the charity said.
The move comes after Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was born in Russia arrested in August at the airport in Paris, and was later charged with several counts of failure to suppress extremist and terrorist content in the application.
Prosecutors also claimed the platform failed to take action against child sexual abuse images. Durov, who was released on bail of five million euros ($5.6 million), later announced a crackdown on illegal content.
The IWF previously said it had found thousands of cases of child sexual abuse on Telegram since 2022.
The charity is a global leader in finding and reporting images and videos of abuse, one of the few non-law enforcement bodies in the world with the legal power to seek such material.
We hope that the new initiative will prevent the spread of illegal images on the public parts of Telegram’s platform.
Derek Ray-Hill, the IWF’s interim chief executive, called the partnership “a transformational first step on a much longer journey.”
“We look forward to seeing what further steps we can take together to create a world where the spread of sexual harassment material online is nearly impossible,” he added.
The app will now use IWF’s unique digital fingerprints of millions of known images and videos of child sexual abuse to spot the sharing of criminal content.
The IWF will also report directly to Telegram when images of child sexual abuse are discovered.
Remi Vaughn, head of press and media relations at Telegram, said the data sets and tools “will strengthen the mechanisms Telegram has in place to protect its public platform.”
