The CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, turned to his platform on Thursday and condemned the accusations made against him by France as a "misguided approach" that brings potential disadvantages to the technology industry.

"Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," he wrote.

"Building technology is hard enough. No innovator is going to create new tools if they know they can be held personally responsible for potential abuses of those tools."

Durov also stressed that Telegram would not be breaking its data privacy principles, but that it was and always will be open to lines of communication with regulators.

In response to the French authorities' claims that their requests to the platform have gone unanswered, the CEO noted that there is a publicly available address for the company's official representative in the EU.

Translated with the free version of the translator - DeepL.com