Over the weekend, Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov was arrested by the French authorities after his private jet landed at Bourget Airport in Paris from Azerbaijan.
- Pavel Durov, 39, is a Russian billionaire who founded Telegram- an encrypted messaging app intended to rival Whatsapp and uphold the values of free speech-in 2013.
- He emigrated from Russia in 2014 after falling out with the Kremlin over his refusal to block the page of Russian opposition leader, the late Alexei Navalny.
- Preliminary reports from the French government say that Durov is likely to be charged over his failure to set up moderators in his platform, allowing criminal activities to proliferate in the app.
Durov is alsoaccused of various crimes including organized drug trafficking, promotion of terrorism, fraud, and cyberbullying. To facilitate further investigations, the authorities have obtained orders to detain Durov for an extended period – according to AFP News agency.
The founder’s defense team said that Telegram abides by the EU Digital Services Act and claimed the charges were absurd. The Russian embassy in Paris has demanded consular access to Durov and maintained that his rights ought to be respected.
Telegram has grown in popularity over the last decade, accounting for almost 1 billion users. Due to its unfiltered feature, it has been used to relay often graphic content and allows groups of up to 200,000 people to share unregulated information. It pioneered many aspects now common on other messaging apps, such as group channels and end-to-end encryption.
Elon Musk, who owns X (formerly Twitter), has criticized Durov’s arrest citing it is a violation of the principles of free speech. Musk said that Europe was slumping into a dangerous crater of censorship. Recently, the SpaceX founder has also been involved in a contentious disagreement with the EU over his app’s absolutism on the free speech debate.
Dissident whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has also expressed discontent with the actions taken by the French government. According to him, the authorities are trying to wring Durov into allowing governments to gain access into private communications.
Why it matters
The tug-of-war between free speech and the government’s desire to track down nefarious activities online remains intense in Europe and the US presently, as geopolitical tensions unfold. The eruption of a multipolar factor in global politics has caused suspicion between governments and tech networks believed to be pawns of the other side.
On one end, countries like Russia and China consider western-based social networks like Meta and X (formerly Twitter), inherently biased against them. The ‘Democratic’ West views apps like TikTok and Telegram as data conduits for their rivals – prompting their governments to ban them entirely or demand tighter regulation.
