What the Telegram founder’s arrest means for the regulation of social media firms
In this week's newsletter: Pavel Durov's detention by French authorities is a major break from the norm - but his low-moderation, non-encrypted app is an anomaly
So we've entered a world in which the CEOs of major social network are arrested and detained. That's quite a shift - and it didn't come in a way anyone was expecting. From Jennifer Rankin in Brussels:
French judicial authorities on Sunday extended the detention of the Russian-born founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, after his arrest at a Paris airport over alleged offences related to the messaging app.
When this phase of detention ends, the judge can decide to free him or press charges and remand in further custody.
Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act - its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving.
Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe.
The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said the investigation concerned crimes related to illicit transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has continued to aggressively market Telegram as a secure messenger." Most recently he issued a scathing criticism of Signal and WhatsApp on his personal Telegram channel, implying that those systems were backdoored by the US government, and only Telegram's independent encryption protocols were really trustworthy.
It no longer feels amusing to see the Telegram organization urge people away from default-encrypted messengers, while refusing to implement essential features that would widely encrypt their own users' messages. In fact, it's starting to feel a bit malicious.
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