Billionaire Telegram messaging app CEO Pavel Durov has been arrested at Bourget airport, just outside of Paris, France.
The specific reason for Durov’s arrest is unknown, but French news network TF1 have claimed it’s part of a preliminary police investigation, attributed to the lack of moderators on the Telegram app.
Supposedly, this lack of moderation has led to undeterred misuse of the messaging platform, especially given that it is encrypted, so it may be that the French government are trying to target other groups via Durov’s arrest as opposed to him directly.
Durov left his native Russia in 2014, and after the country invaded Ukraine in 2022 Telegram has become one of the most crucial sources of unfiltered content from the conflict – but has led to the circulation of misleading and misinforming content from both sides due to the previously mentioned lack of moderation.
Due to Telegram’s encryption, it allows users to evade official scrutiny from the government, and so has functioned as one of the few places where those in zones of conflict can access independent news coverage of the war.
Russian politicians have been quick to criticise France for Durov’s arrest, especially given the CEO’s statement that Telegram should be a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”, but Russia banned Telegram in 2018 for precisely the same reasons (scrutiny regarding security and data breach concerns), although the move did little to curb the app’s popularity in the region (so it unbanned it in 2020).
Russia’s official representative to international organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said on X: “Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play more or less visible role in international information space it is not safe for them to visit countries which move towards much more totalitarian societies.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who recently stepped down from his presidential campaign in order to endorse Donald Trump, a man he has previously, extremely publicly, called “frightened” and “unhinged”, said of the situation on X that protecting the right to free speech “has never been more urgent”.
Elon Musk, a tech billionaire like Durov and owner of X (formerly Twitter), said on his site: “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.” Musk has been critical of the situation in the UK as of late, with arrests made for criminal acts during right-wing riots, and particularly the arrests made for posts inciting violence online, such as through his site.
It would seem that many of the figures are missing the point of Durov’s arrest – it (reportedly) isn’t because he has said anything that is deemed to be indictable, it is due to concerns over the role of Telegram in shielding the spread of misinformation and the organisation of violent groups (such as UK and Jan. 6 rioters, who are supported by political figures such as Donald Trump, who is publicly supported by RFK Jr. via endorsement and by Elon Musk through his platforming of Trump on X).
Whilst Durov’s arrest is concerning, it doesn’t seem like a free speech issue, it’s a national security case. Even if we choose to, for some reason, approach it as a free speech case as these public figures have, it is not Durov himself that the French government is targeting, it is those his app shields by design and who use it to engage in illegal and violent acts. And, let us remind ourselves, that freedom of speech (in most parts of the world) thankfully does exist, even if censorship is pervasive on social media such as X.
As has recently come to prevalence, however, criminal acts such as the incitement of violence or spreading of misinformation and propaganda (which this arrest is in conjunction with, as the app is facing criticism for shielding criminal groups) are not, and never should be, free from consequence. Therefore, it seems like a false equivalency for public figures to relate Durov’s arrest to freedom of speech when it is actually about whether or not his app, Telegram, is complicit in criminal acts.
Telegram, like any social media site, and therefore Durov, is likely being pressured by the French government to provide access to comms so that they can more efficiently tackle security concerns, although it’s unsure where the billionaire will land on this matter, having previously said that he “would rather be free than to take orders from anyone” (thanks, Reuters).