Pavel Durov, the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outdoors Paris late Saturday night. The arrest occurred shortly after Durov arrived on a personal jet from Azerbaijan and is alleged to be a part of a joint investigation by a number of companies investigating alleged failures in content material moderation on the Telegram platform that will have facilitated prison exercise.
In line with sources who spoke to Reuters, French authorities had noticed Durov on the passenger checklist and moved to arrest him attributable to an current warrant. A number of French TV experiences stated that authorities have been investigating Telegram’s alleged moderation failures, which they consider might have facilitated a spread of unlawful actions, together with terrorism, drug trafficking, cash laundering, fraud, and baby exploitation.
Telegram, which relies in Dubai, responded to Durov’s arrest by stating that the corporate “abides by EU legal guidelines, together with the Digital Companies Act” and that its moderation practices are “inside business requirements and always bettering.” The corporate emphasised that Durov “has nothing to cover and travels ceaselessly in Europe,” calling it “absurd to say {that a} platform or its proprietor are accountable for abuse of that platform.”
The arrest has drawn criticism from numerous quarters, together with X (Twitter) proprietor Elon Musk, who has posted the hashtag “#FreePavel” on the platform, and has beforehand claimed that free speech is underneath assault in Europe. Russian officers have additionally expressed their concern, with the overseas ministry demanding consular entry to Durov, who holds twin French and UAE citizenship.
Durov, also known as the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg,” based Telegram in 2013 after leaving Russia attributable to conflicts with authorities over his refusal to close down opposition communities on his earlier social media platform, VK. In 2018, Russia started blocking Telegram after the app refused to grant state safety companies entry to customers’ messages, however the ban was lifted in 2020 when Telegram agreed to assist with “extremism investigations.” Telegram has since grown to just about 1 billion customers and has turn into an important communication software, notably in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
The Telegram chief’s arrest has additionally put Telegram’s encryption practices underneath the highlight once more. Regardless of being broadly described as an “encrypted messaging app,” Telegram’s default settings for many customers don’t present end-to-end encryption. Not like WhatsApp and Sign, one-on-one chats should not encrypted by default, and group chats are by no means encrypted. Because of this Telegram employees doubtlessly have entry to each message despatched in these chats, which can be why Russia is so involved in regards to the arrest.
For customers searching for true end-to-end encryption on Telegram, it have to be manually configured as a “secret chat,” a course of that isn’t all that easy. Not solely that, these “secret” group chats are restricted to solely two customers, which raises questions in regards to the platform’s efforts to guard consumer privateness.
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