Under the microscope —
The new probe is separate from the French investigation into the platform.
Brussels is investigating whether Telegram breached EU digital rules by failing to provide accurate user numbers, as officials push to bring the controversial messaging app under stricter supervision.
EU legal and data experts suspect that the app has understated its presence in the EU to stay under a 45 million user threshold, above which large online platforms are subject to a swath of Brussels regulations designed to check their influence.
The EU probe comes alongside a wide-ranging French investigation into alleged criminal activity on Telegram that led to the arrest on Saturday of its founder, Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov. On Wednesday evening, a magistrate was due to decide whether to charge or release him.
Telegram has said Durov, who is now a French-Emirati citizen, has “nothing to hide.”
Telegram said in February it had 41 million users in the EU. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), Telegram was supposed to provide an updated number this month but did not, only declaring it had “significantly fewer than 45 million average monthly active recipients in the EU.”
The failure to provide the new data puts Telegram in breach of the DSA, two EU officials said, adding it was likely the EU’s probe would find the true number was above the threshold for “very large online platforms.”
Such a designation brings greater obligations for compliance and content moderation, third-party auditing, and mandatory data sharing with the European Commission.
Telegram exploded in popularity in recent years, offering encrypted messaging services as well as groups and broadcasting channels used by global leaders, and claims to be nearing 1 billion users globally.
Earlier this year, Durov told the Financial Times that Telegram’s user base was “roughly proportionate to the population of each market [or] continent,” with the exception of China.
Telegram did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the EU’s probe.
The commission’s Joint Research Centre—the EU’s in-house data and science service—is conducting a technical investigation to determine Telegram’s number of EU users, officials briefed on the probe told the FT, alongside ongoing talks with the app about its own calculations.
“We have a way through our own systems and calculations to determine how accurate the user data is,” said Thomas Regnier, commission spokesperson for digital issues.
“And if we think that they haven’t been providing accurate user data, we can unilaterally designate them [as a very large platform] on the basis of our own investigation.”
The DSA rules for very large platforms came into operation a year ago, forcing the world’s biggest online players including Instagram, Google, and TikTok to hire thousands of people to work on compliance with the rules.
The rules, which include banning the targeting of ads to users based on religion, gender, or sexual preferences; mechanisms to force platforms to disclose what steps they are taking to tackle misinformation or propaganda; and new protections for minors, have prompted legal challenges from some platforms due to the onerous requirements.
Durov has built ties in France since leaving Russia in 2014, allegedly fleeing the country after refusing to comply with Moscow’s demands for access to certain Ukrainian user data. He was granted citizenship in 2021.
French President Emmanuel Macron had lunch with Durov in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
“Macron meets CEOs and entrepreneurs all the time to discuss business and investment, so it was in that context,” the person said, adding that the head of state and Durov had met “one or two times” but not in recent years. The lunch was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy in San Francisco
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