Over the past several years, Telegram has been blocking over one million groups and over 10 million users who violated the messenger's policies per month, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said.
"Over the past few years, our moderation team has been working tirelessly to keep Telegram safe. Each month they removed about one million channels and groups, along with over ten million users who violated our rules," Durov said on Telegram.
Such effectiveness has been achieved thanks to the community's efforts and to the implementation of AI-based tools, he added.
"However, much of this work remained behind the scenes. The public wasn't fully aware of the extent of our moderation efforts, and media outlets often relied on outdated information from parts of our website that hadn't been updated in a decade," Durov's post read.
In late September, Durov said that Telegram had updated its privacy policy to allow the sharing of IP addresses and phone numbers of users found to be in violation of its rules with national authorities following relevant requests.