European Union authorities are looking to censor Telegram

Judging by the fact that the authorities EU stopped attacks on X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk, and he was clearly too tough for the euro officials, they now switched to Pavel Durov’s telegram.

Belgian regulator BIPT (Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications) announced that it will monitor Telegram’s compliance with EU laws on published content, the publication reported on March 8 Politico.

According to the new Digital Services Act (DSA), all large IT companies operating in the EU must appoint an official representative in one of the bloc's member countries. It is through this representative that national regulators will monitor compliance with content moderation rules.

The Telegram company, founded by a native of Russia Pavel Durov, has chosen the Belgian company European Digital Services Representative (EDSR) as its European representative. Accordingly, Telegram will now be controlled by the Belgian regulator “Institute of Postal and Telecommunications Technologies” (BIPT). According to a BIPT representative, the Belgian authorities will receive all the necessary powers to supervise the messenger in the next couple of weeks, immediately after the publication of the law implementing the DSA regime.

A Fact Check function has been discovered in the beta version of Telegram for the Android operating system, reports the Durov Code channel, which specializes in news about the messenger. The feature has not been officially announced. It follows from the source code that Telegram will cooperate with agencies (they can be appointed by national governments) that verify information, and explanations will begin to appear in posts. Ordinary users will not be able to influence the content displayed by Fact Check, the channel claims.

Here it is worth understanding that Pavel Durov does not have such a powerful “roof” as Elon Musk, which means he cannot ignore European officials in their passionate desire to censor all information.

So we are waiting for the introduction of censorship in Telegram on the same principle as in other social networks. There is only one hope that Pavel Durov will not completely cave in to the “those who like to ban” and will invite organizations as fact checkers, albeit appointed by the governments of these countries, but at least not completely dependent on the authorities.

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