It has been one month since the arrest by French authorities of Pavel Durov, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, on charges of allegedly failing to act against criminals using his platform. He’s still in France after being released on a five-million-euro ($5.6 million) bail and must check in with police twice a week.
He very quickly began cooperating with the French government, it appears, though his lawyer decried it as “absurd” and Telegram supporters and free speech advocates blasted the efforts at state censorship. “It is totally absurd to think that the head of a social network… could be involved in criminal acts that could be committed on the messaging service,” Durov’s lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski had said. The question from the start was: why the highly unusual effort to prosecute a CEO directly instead of bringing legal action against the company as a whole? (the normative route)
The whole spectacle of him being hauled into custody after disembarking from his private jet over the possibility that individuals were using the world’s largest messaging app for criminal activity also seemed designed to ‘send a message’ from Western governments and create a chilling effect. We explored this scenario in “Musk Should Be Nervous” – Deep State Lackey Admits Real Target Following Telegram Founder’s Arrest.
On Monday Durov made a significant announcement which is clearly the result of his ongoing legal ordeal in France. He said Telegram has removed more “problematic content” at this point. He further acknowledged in the new statement that the app’s search feature “has been abused by people who violated our terms of service to sell illegal goods.” […]
— Read More: www.zerohedge.com
