EU Builds Case to Place Telegram Under Stricter Content Scrutiny

Gian Volpicelli
·3-min read

(Bloomberg) -- The European Union is quietly gathering evidence to support the case that the controversial social media and messaging app Telegram should be subject to the bloc’s strictest content-moderation regulations.

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Officials at the EU’s executive arm are using data from several web traffic monitoring firms to establish that Telegram’s social-media platform draws more than 45 million monthly active users, a threshold that would subject it to extra scrutiny under the bloc’s new Digital Services Act, according to a European Commission official.

Data provided by Similarweb Ltd., one of the network analysis tools the EU will be using, suggest Telegram’s app averaged 50.7 million monthly active Android users from just seven of the EU’s 27 countries between February and July 2024.

While that number could put Telegram past the EU’s 45-million-user threshold for tighter supervision, a large portion may not count. The EU doesn’t consider messaging services under the DSA, and would generally need to parse out those customers from users of Telegram’s groups and channels.

The arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram’s chief executive officer, has increased regulators’ sense of urgency to more tightly monitor the social media and messaging app, which is often used by criminals and pro-Kremlin accounts to spread disinformation, said the commission official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the bloc’s methodology.

Durov, who was charged last month in France for complicity in spreading child sexual-abuse imagery and other crimes, was accused of failing to cooperate with authorities in investigating offenses on Telegram. He was released on bail on Aug. 28.

To quantify Telegram’s user base, the EU is drawing from external sources, including databases from Similarweb and Boston-based Semrush Holdings Inc., the commission official said. The EU’s executive arm will apply its own interpretation to all the data it’s examining.

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Telegram continues to insist that its social-media user base remains too small to meet the EU’s threshold. A “significant number of Telegram users never access” the groups, the company said in an emailed statement.

If the commission decides that Telegram’s self-reported figures are unreliable, it could waive the distinction and unilaterally designate the app.

“It’s for Telegram to make this differentiation and calculation, but we could take all users into account if necessary,” Thomas Regnier, a commission spokesperson on digital issues, said in a news conference last week.

Similarweb blends anonymized private traffic data with public information to extrapolate apps’ usage patterns, according to a description on its website. But the company cannot distinguish whether users are accessing Telegram’s social network features such as groups or channels.

In follow-up exchanges, a commission spokesperson declined to comment on Similarweb’s figures, or to discuss the data sources it’s drawing from. Similarweb’s research editor, David Carr, said that while the company’s staff haven’t directly worked with EU authorities, the commission may be using its data to develop its own analysis. Semrush didn’t reply to requests for comment.

In February, Telegram said it had 41 million unique monthly active users in the EU. Last month, Telegram updated the statement on its website to say it has “significantly fewer than 45 million” users, without providing an exact figure – an omission that is itself in breach of the DSA, the commission official said.

--With assistance from Jake Rudnitsky.

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