Messaging app Telegram will roll out new tools to prevent the dissemination of child sexual abuse images after teaming up with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK charity said on Wednesday.
The social media platform, which claims to have more than 950 million monthly active users, will use the IWF’s tools and data to “detect, suspend, remove and block images of child sexual abuse”, the charity said.
The move comes after Telegram’s Russian-born founder and CEO Pavel Durov He was arrested in August At a Paris airport and later accused of failing to limit extremist and terrorist content on the app.
Prosecutors also said the platform failed to take action against child sexual abuse images. Durov, who was later released on bail of five million euros ($5.6 million), announced a crackdown on illegal content.
The IWF previously said it had found thousands of cases of child sexual abuse images on Telegram since 2022.
The charity is a global leader in finding and reporting images and videos of abuse, being one of the few non-law enforcement organizations with the legal power to search for such material.
The new initiative is expected to prevent the spread of illegal images on public parts of the Telegram platform.
Derek Ray-Hill, the IWF’s interim director-general, called the partnership “a transformative first step in 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 abuse material online is nearly impossible,” he added.
The app will now use IWF’s unique digital fingerprints of millions of known child sexual abuse images and videos to detect when criminal content is being shared.
The IWF will notify Telegram directly when images of child sexual abuse are detected.
Remi Vaughn, Telegram’s Head of Press and Media Relations, said the datasets and tools will “strengthen Telegram’s mechanisms to protect its public platform.”
