Turns out the story is even weirder, Durov wasn't always a 'everything is allowed' free speech guy. Iran must be defended
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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Wild-ass theory: Putin convinced Durov to travel to France to get himself arrested to rile up millions of Telegram users and make France look foolish/despotic.
Seems unnecessary, due to the paradox of intolerance it's trivial to be made to look the bad guy if you are actively trying to curtail fash influence in the public discourse.
I’m seeing some chatter from leftist meme pages (THE most reliable source of news on the internet /s) linking this to a leak of israeli data on telegram less than a week ago. Probably just a conspiracy theory, but thought it was relevant.
Everything is terrible
Conservatives in particular have, for culture war reasons, recently recommended Telegram—an “encrypted messaging” app that has many parts that are not encrypted and which does not have a clear governance structure—over Signal, an app that is open source and by all accounts uses one of the strongest encryption protocols ever created, on every chat that happens on the platform. Because conservatives have promoted Telegram recently, some of them now see Durov’s arrest as a particular crackdown on America’s right wing, free speech, and, possibly, a political incursion against the Russian government and military, both of which use Telegram.
https://www.404media.co/how-telegrams-founder-pavel-durov-became-a-culture-war-martyr/
this article is so good. 404 is always crushing it
Conservatives in particular have, for culture war reasons, recently recommended Telegram—an “encrypted messaging” app that has many parts that are not encrypted and which does not have a clear governance structure—over Signal, an app that is open source and by all accounts uses one of the strongest encryption protocols ever created, on every chat that happens on the platform.
Refusing to keep your shit secret to own the libs
The plot thickens!
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1827622301363232885.html
Maybe Durov felt safer in French custody than possibly being extraordinarily renditioned to Russia from the UAE?
that does not make any sense
EDIT: to elaborate. if he was in danger in the UAE, he could just go somewhere that isn't france. the thread speculates he got arrested to 'signal' he's down with the west, which is typical conspiracy baking.
also nothing in the thread indicates why durov would feel threatened by Russia. if anything, it suggests the opposite. also what is "Ukrainian sources"
also nothing in the thread indicates why durov would feel threatened by Russia.
I think russia was debating banning telegram recently, because encryption allows for opposition, but kept it because of its military value.
If your platform was almost banned by a dictatorship I see why you wouldn't feel comfortable there.
I mean, he probably is safer in France than in Russia. Sure, he's gonna have the gendarmes crawling up his ass and Telegram's privacy credentials are likely in jeopardy, but its still better than a visit from the FSB any day.
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
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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.
[2] Le Monde article "The Telegram founder's mysterious French passport", archive link: https://archive.is/6sakK
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.
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.
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).
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
and furries, for some reason
And Finnish university students.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t know anything about French internet law.
Same here, I'll admit
minor focus but this is one hell of a load-bearing sentence:
Durov told U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson in April
I hate the labelling of Telegram (and also, to be fair here, WhatsApp) as social media platforms.
That's like saying email is a social media platform because mailing lists exist.
Hang around the paleo-geek community enough and people will argue precisely that.