Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested in Paris over the weekend over allegations that his platform is getting used for illicit exercise resembling drug trafficking and the distribution of kid sexual abuse pictures.
Durov, who was born in Russia, spent a lot of his childhood in Italy and is a citizen of France, Russia, the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis and the United Arab Emirates. He was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget Airport in France on Saturday after touchdown from Azerbaijan.
In a press release posted to its platform, Telegram stated it abides by EU legal guidelines and its content material moderation is “inside business requirements and continuously bettering.” Durov, the corporate added, “has nothing to cover and travels often in Europe.”
Listed here are some particulars on Telegram, the app on the middle of Durov’s arrest.
What’s Telegram?
Telegram is an app that enables for one-on-one conversations, group chats and huge “channels” that allow folks broadcast messages to subscribers. Not like rivals resembling Meta’s WhatsApp, Telegram’s group chats permit as many as 200,000 folks, in comparison with a most of 1,024 for WhatsApp. Consultants have raised considerations that misinformation spreads simply in group chats of this measurement.
Telegram provides encryption for his or her communications, however — opposite to a well-liked false impression — this function shouldn’t be on by default. Customers have to change on the choice to encrypt their chats. It additionally would not work with group chats. That contrasts with rival Sign and Fb Messenger, the place chats are encrypted end-to-end by default.
Telegram says it has greater than 950 million energetic customers. It’s extensively utilized in France as a messaging software, together with by some officers within the presidential palace and within the ministry behind the investigation into Durov. However French investigators have additionally discovered the app has been utilized by Islamic extremists and drug traffickers.
Telegram was launched in 2013 by Durov and his brother Nikolai. In keeping with Telegram, Pavel Durov helps the app “financially and ideologically whereas Nikolai’s enter is technological.”
Earlier than Telegram, Durov based VKontakte, Russia’s largest social community. The corporate got here underneath stress amid the Russian authorities’s crackdown after mass pro-democracy protests rocked Moscow on the finish of 2011 and 2012. Durov stated authorities authorities demanded that the VKontakte take down the net communities of Russian opposition activists. It later requested the platform at hand over the non-public information of customers who took half within the 2013 rebellion in Ukraine, which ultimately ousted a pro-Kremlin president.
Learn Extra: How Telegram Turned the Digital Battlefield within the Russia-Ukraine Struggle
However Durov bought his stake in VKontakte after stress from Russian authorities in 2014. He additionally left the nation. In the present day, Telegram relies in Dubai, which Durov referred to as “one of the best place for a impartial platform like ours to be in if we wish to make sure that we are able to defend our customers’ privateness and freedom of speech” in an April interview with conservative speak present host Tucker Carlson.
Why was Durov arrested?
Durov was detained in France as a part of a judicial inquiry opened final month involving 12 alleged legal violations, in response to the Paris prosecutor’s workplace. It stated the suspected violations embrace complicity in promoting youngster sexual abuse materials and in drug trafficking, fraud, abetting organized crime transactions and refusing to share data or paperwork with investigators when required by legislation.
As of Tuesday morning, he had not been charged. He might be held for questioning till Wednesday night, at which level judges should both cost him or launch him.
What has been the response?
In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to touch upon reviews of Durov’s arrest in France.
“We nonetheless don’t know what precisely Durov is being accused of,” Peskov stated Monday throughout his every day media convention name. “We haven’t heard any official statements on that matter.”
“Let’s wait till the costs are introduced — if they’re introduced,” Peskov stated.
Russian authorities officers have expressed outrage at Durov’s detention, with some calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double normal on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows amongst Kremlin critics: in 2018 Russian authorities themselves tried to dam Telegram however failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.
Elsewhere, Elon Musk, the billionaire proprietor of X who has referred to as himself a “ free speech absolutist,” has been talking out in assist of Durov and posted ”#freePavel” following the arrest.
“It’s absurd to assert {that a} platform or its proprietor are liable for abuse of that platform,” Telegram’s put up after the arrest stated. “Nearly a billion customers globally use Telegram as a way of communication and as a supply of significant data. We’re awaiting a immediate decision of this case. Telegram is with you all.”
Does Telegram average content material?
Western governments have usually criticized Telegram for a scarcity of content material moderation, which consultants say opens up the messaging platform for potential use in cash laundering, drug trafficking and the sharing of fabric linked to the sexual exploitation of minors.
In comparison with different messaging platforms, Telegram is “much less safe (and) extra lax by way of coverage and detection of unlawful content material,” stated David Thiel, a Stanford College researcher, who has investigated the usage of on-line platforms for youngster exploitation, at its Web Observatory.
As well as, Telegram “seems mainly unresponsive to legislation enforcement,” Thiel stated, including that messaging service WhatsApp “submitted over 1.3 million CyberTipline reviews in 2023 (and) Telegram submits none.”
In 2022, Germany issued fines of 5.125 million euros ($5 million) towards the operators of Telegram for failing to adjust to German legislation. The Federal Workplace of Justice stated that Telegram FZ-LLC hasn’t established a lawful manner for reporting unlawful content material or named an entity in Germany to obtain official communication.
Each are required underneath German legal guidelines that regulate massive on-line platforms.
Final 12 months, Brazil quickly suspended Telegram over its failure to give up information on neo-Nazi exercise associated to a police inquiry into faculty shootings in November.
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Related Press Writers Barbara Surk in Good, France, and Daria Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this story.
