South Korea to ask Telegram, other social media firms to help tackle digital sex crimes

In addition to Telegram, the commission said it would be seeking cooperation from X as well as Meta's Facebook and Instagram and Google's YouTube. None of the companies responded to Reuters request for comment.
Criticism of Telegram in South Korea has coincided with the arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram's Russian-born founder, on the weekend - part of a French probe into child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.
The number of deepfake sex crime cases in South Korea has surged from 156 in 2021 when data was first collated to 297 so far this year, with most of the perpetrators being teenagers, according to police data.
The victims are usually female and include school students as well as female soldiers in South Korea's military.
South Koreans have made more than 6,400 requests for help from the Korea Communications Standards Commission to have sexually explicit deepfake content taken down this year. That compares with nearly 7,200 cases last year in which the commission agreed to help take down the content.