First France, Now South Korea — Telegram’s Legal Troubles Are Only Getting Bigger. Here’s Why – NBC New York

• Following the recent arrest of its founder in France, Telegram is now facing potential legal trouble in South Korea.
• According to a report by local news agency Yonhap, the country is investigating the chat platform’s possible role in complicity in sex crimes.
• Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on August 24 on similar charges.

Following the recent arrest of its founder in France, Telegram is now facing potential legal trouble in South Korea.

According to a report by local news agency Yonhap News Agency, the country’s chief police inspector has announced a preliminary investigation into the chat platform’s possible role in inciting sexual crimes.

This comes amid South Korea’s efforts to tackle the spread of deepfake pornography, which targets young women, including teenagers, in the country.

The investigation presents a major new legal challenge for Telegram after founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on August 24 on suspicion of violations related to the messaging app.

Parallels in the cases

Durov, the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire, was arrested by French authorities following a preliminary investigation into Telegram that began on July 8.

Similar to the investigation in South Korea, French authorities are investigating the platform’s role in distributing pornographic images of minors and in facilitating organised crime, drug trafficking and fraud.

Durov was reportedly accused of failing to restrict such criminal activity on the platform. Telegram said in a statement on social media platform X that it complies with EU laws and that Durov had “nothing to hide.”

According to Yonhap’s report on Monday, Woo Jong-soo, head of the National Bureau of Investigation, drew links between their case and that in France and said there were plans to cooperate with their French counterparts and other international institutions.

According to Woo, the investigation could be complicated by the fact that Telegram does not readily provide investigative data, such as account information, to state investigators, including those in the US.

The French investigation also found that Telegram refuses to share information with researchers when required by law.

While Durov’s arrest is seen as an unprecedented move, the platform has also recently come under legal scrutiny in Brazil and Germany over concerns about illegal and harmful content.

Telegram problems

While Telegram claims that the company’s content moderation practices are “within industry standards and are continuously improving,” there are certain features of the platform that are coming under global scrutiny.

By requiring users to provide only a phone number upon registration and providing a feature to conduct end-to-end encrypted conversations via a ‘secret chat’ function, the app offers a high degree of anonymity.

These anonymous features have long attracted illegal actors like scammers and even extremist groups to the platform. Now, in South Korea, they are attracting distributors of deepfake porn.

Deepfakes are videos, sounds, or images of a real person that have been digitally altered and manipulated. They have become increasingly prominent with the rise of generative AI technology.

According to the Yonhap report, South Korean police are investigating eight automated programs that generate deepfake pornography for Telegram groups, as well as chat rooms responsible for distributing such content.

The investigations come as pressure mounts on authorities to respond to a growing number of reports detailing how Telegram groups, some with as many as 220,000 members, have been used to share sexually exploitative deepfake photos of female students from local universities, high schools and even middle schools.

This is not the first time that Telegram has been at the center of such a scandal in South Korea.

In 2020, South Korean authorities arrested the leader of an online network that used Telegram to blackmail and coerce women and children into sharing sexually explicit images of themselves. No legal action was taken against Telegram at the time.

Chris Beer, consumer and technology analyst at GWI, responded to Durov’s arrest by telling CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” that it’s unclear how far authorities will go in regulating and cracking down on Telegram. However, other messaging and social media apps could also come under scrutiny.

Beer added that there is still a tension between consumers’ desire to protect their freedom of expression and government oversight to protect them from harmful content.