Reading the corporate media coverage of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in Paris this week, you’d think he was a Kremlin spy or an international terrorist, not the founder of a popular social media app with nearly a billion users.
The charges against Durov — whom the media never fail to inform us was born in Russia — include “complicity in the distribution of child pornography and selling of drugs, money laundering, and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement,” according to The New York Times. Nearly every news outlet said something similar, that Durov is “complicit” in serious crimes like child pornography, creating the impression that Durov is somehow personally involved in nefarious criminal enterprises — or that Telegram itself is a criminal enterprise.
In reality, Telegram and Durov are under investigation in France because the social media app maintains a more rigorous commitment to free speech than most of its competitors (with the possible exception of X under Elon Musk, who has spoken out against Durov’s arrest as an affront to free speech).
What we’re seeing with the arrest of Durov, in other words, is the criminalization of free speech by a state, in this case Emmanuel Macron’s France, under the pretext that lightly moderating content on big social media platforms, as Telegram does, is tantamount to complicity in whatever the users of the app say or do. This is nonsense of course. No one, not even the French president, would hold Mark Zuckerberg liable for everything Facebook or Instagram users post. The purpose of targeting Durov in particular is to bring Telegram under the control of the state so that it can be used as an instrument of propaganda and social control.
