Dec 16, 2024 15:00:00

Messaging app Telegram reports on content moderation, announces it removed around 15.5 million groups and channels in 2024

In August 2024, Telegram, founder and CEO of the messaging app,

Pavel Durov, was arrested and indicted on charges of complicity in criminal activities such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and child pornography on Telegram. Since then, Telegram has been conducting a large-scale crackdown on harmful content, and as a result of these crackdowns, Telegram has reported that it has removed more than 15.5 million groups and channels in 2024 at the time of writing.

Telegram: Contact @durov
https://t.me/durov/383

Telegram Moderation Overview

https://telegram.org/moderation

AI helps Telegram remove 15 million suspect groups and channels in 2024 | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/13/ai-helps-telegram-remove-15-million-suspect-groups-and-channels-in-2024/

According to Durov, over the past few years, Telegram's moderation team has been deleting groups and channels that transmit harmful content. Telegram's moderation team has been deleting about 1 million groups and channels per month using reports from users, AI tools and automated detection systems. However, much of this work was done in secret, and media outlets were publishing old information obtained from websites that had not been updated for a long time. As a result, many users were in a situation where they criticized Telegram for not doing enough moderation.

Therefore, Telegram has created an official page to show the current status of moderation. On this page, you can see the status of group and channel removals by Telegram's moderation team.

Telegram Moderation Overview
https://telegram.org/moderation

Telegram blocks tens of thousands of groups and channels every day that violate its terms of use , including inciting violence, sharing child abuse materials, and trading illegal goods. Since 2015, the moderation team has been proactively monitoring using user reports and machine learning, and in early 2024, the company introduced cutting-edge AI moderation tools. The total number of groups and channels blocked in 2024 was 15,578,753 at the time of writing.

Telegram has also implemented a strict policy against child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and since 2018, images shared on Telegram are automatically checked against a database of hashes of CSAM blocked by moderators over the past 10 years. In 2024, the company is expanding this database with information from organizations such as

the Internet Watch Foundation . As a result, the company successfully blocked 707,576 CSAM-related groups and channels in 2024.

Additionally, since 2022, Telegram has partnered with organizations such as the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology to strengthen its efforts to remove content related to violence and terrorism. During 2024, Telegram blocked 130,119 terrorist-related communities.