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Pavel Durov arrested in France over allowing untrammelled unmoderated criminality on Telegram (www.reuters.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Copying my comment from this lobste.rs submission b/c there's a high risk it will be removed as off-topic

Also LOL jzw: https://mastodon.social/@jwz/113024385254398763

///

I'm confident Durov was arrested because the platform he was responsible for is a hotbed of illegal activity, most of which is not under the cover of encryption. Telegram doesn't seem to have a large trust and safety team (which is a huge cost center when at Telegram's scale) and there's a lot of stuff that might be legal in many other countries but is not in France.

Arresting a business owner is not unknown when the risk of them absconding is high (Durov has dual citizenship and access to a private jet) and there's a high risk of evidence being destroyed. Durov has money and access to the best legal representation money can buy. He will have to cool his heels in Paris for a couple of months before implementing some changes to Telegrams moderation.

Edit I didn't know much about Durov before, so I did some reading.

This is from Le Monde about the arrest[1]:

France's OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offenses including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism [...]

Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform. "Enough of Telegram's impunity," said one of the investigators, adding they were surprised Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.

Why is Durov a French citizen, as well as already being a citizen of the UAE? Turns out that's pretty hinky[2].

I don't think we're talking about a principled defender of free speech and privacy rights here. This is a very rich dude doing very rich dude things and flying too close to the sun.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/08/25/telegram-chief-pavel-durov-arrested-at-french-airport-officials_6721313_7.html

[2] Le Monde article "The Telegram founder's mysterious French passport", archive link: https://archive.is/6sakK

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m confident Durov was arrested because the platform he was responsible for is a hotbed of illegal activity, most of which is not under the cover of encryption.

That was Durov's biggest mistake in retrospect. Man should've taken some lessons from Megaupload's demise and gone all the way on E2E - would've given him plenty of plausible deniability if he genuinely couldn't have known what any of his users were doing.

It would've arguably brought other problems, but it would've removed that golden opportunity for the gendarmes to nail him.

Would've likely also earned Durov some brownie points with privacy nuts, as well.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I'm pretty sure that if everything would have been EE2E on Telegram it would never have reached the size and popularity that it has.

Plenty of people are showering unearned privacy brownie points on Telegram already. There's a bizarre Telegram/Signal beef online since forever.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

i have no idea why people say that telegram is private and secure and whatever, it's just whatsapp/twitter hybrid for former soviet union people

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

and furries, for some reason

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

And Finnish university students.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Granted. I was mainly thinking from the angle of "how to I keep the prosecution from having a slam-dunk case against Durov" here.

Also, it seems my expectations from privacy nuts were a bit higher than I expected.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think the prosecution will have a hard time, but I don't know anything about French internet law. But if it's a weird-ass protection deal to keep Durov out of Russia's hands, it might just be smoke and mirrors anyway.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

French law has somewhat strict laws on how quickly you need to react (take it down, and keep all logs/account info for law enforcement) if law enforcement tells you some account is used for terrorism/pedo stuff. Pretty sure Telegram simply never complied with these laws.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I don’t know anything about French internet law.

Same here, I'll admit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I’m pretty sure that if everything would have been EE2E on Telegram it would never have reached the size and popularity that it has.

I don't know what you're saying here because it makes no sense. No one who uses or shills for Telegram thinks lack of EE2E is a good thing, absolutely no one. They use it despite of lack of EE2E (ignorance or ideologically-flavored ignorance).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

As I predicted, he's out on bail, cannot leave France, and must report to a police station every 2 days. Hardly an oubliette in the Bastille, which people seem to have been convinced would be his fate,