Telegram CEO Arrested in France Over Content Moderation Issues

Pavel Durov, the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris late Saturday evening. The arrest occurred shortly after Durov arrived on a private jet from Azerbaijan and is said to be part of a joint investigation by several agencies investigating alleged failures in content moderation on the Telegram platform that may have facilitated criminal activity.

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According to sources who spoke to Reuters, French authorities had spotted Durov on the passenger list and moved to arrest him due to an existing warrant. Several French TV reports said that authorities have been investigating Telegram's alleged moderation failures, which they believe may have facilitated a range of illegal activities, including terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, and child exploitation.

Telegram, which is based in Dubai, responded to Durov's arrest by stating that the company "abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act" and that its moderation practices are "within industry standards and constantly improving." The company emphasized that Durov "has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe," calling it "absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform."

The arrest has drawn criticism from various quarters, including X (Twitter) owner Elon Musk, who has posted the hashtag "#FreePavel" on the platform, and has previously claimed that free speech is under attack in Europe. Russian officials have also expressed their concern, with the foreign ministry demanding consular access to Durov, who holds dual French and UAE citizenship.

Durov, often referred to as the "Russian Mark Zuckerberg," founded Telegram in 2013 after leaving Russia due to conflicts with authorities over his refusal to shut down opposition communities on his previous social media platform, VK. In 2018, Russia began blocking Telegram after the app refused to grant state security services access to users' messages, but the ban was lifted in 2020 when Telegram agreed to help with "extremism investigations." Telegram has since grown to nearly 1 billion users and has become a crucial communication tool, particularly in Ukraine since Russia's invasion in 2022.

The Telegram chief's arrest has also put Telegram's encryption practices under the spotlight again. Despite being widely described as an "encrypted messaging app," Telegram's default settings for most users do not provide end-to-end encryption. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, one-on-one chats are not encrypted by default, and group chats are never encrypted. This means that Telegram staff potentially have access to every message sent in these chats, which may be why Russia is so concerned about the arrest.

For users seeking true end-to-end encryption on Telegram, it must be manually configured as a "secret chat," a process that is not all that straightforward. Not only that, these "secret" group chats are limited to only two users, which raises questions about the platform's efforts to protect user privacy.

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Top Rated Comments

DJTaurus Avatar
15 months ago
1984 predictions 100% accurate
Score: 89 Votes (Like | Disagree)
contacos Avatar
15 months ago
We are slowly but surely driving into authoritarian territory while bitching about Putin or China. Worked out great the first time around!
Score: 55 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Lexdexia Avatar
15 months ago
This is absurd, it's like arresting the CEO of a car company because bad people used the car to do illegal things such as terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, and child exploitation. I guess this has more to do with the ever increasing attacks on freedom of expression in the west and how Telegram refuses to give governments backdoors to their user data more than anything else.
Score: 51 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Armada2 Avatar
15 months ago
I guess Timmy better not fly to France or they might arrest him with the latest debate of Macs having 8GB RAM rather than 16GM RAM as minimum ?
Score: 37 Votes (Like | Disagree)
twintin Avatar
15 months ago

He has a responsibility to moderate content as a CEO, but since when is running a company poorly a crime?
Since the day governments are not granted backdoors to your system. ?
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wanted797 Avatar
15 months ago
I guess they’ll be arresting the all the top tech CEOs for the same thing lol?
Score: 34 Votes (Like | Disagree)