On August 24, Pavel Durov, CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested at a Paris airport as part of a larger investigation by French authorities into criminal activity on the platform.
In a press release, a French prosecutor wrote that Telegram had refused to cooperate with authorities in their efforts to stop the spread of child porn, drugs, and money laundering on the platform.
But the arrest also sparked backlash from some users, who decried what they considered to be governmental overreach and censorship. Edward Snowden called the arrest an “assault on the basic human rights of speech and association.”
But then, the Time Magazine called Telegram “the Digital Battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine War”.. so what is going on?..
by Glass-Photograph-117
17 comments
The fact that the Kremlin is so pissed about it suggests to me that there’s something significant here.
Outrage…no outrage here.
Any site, any app, any anything, that is Ruzzian – basically works for the Kremlin.
No outrage from me, this guy is scum
“Telegram had refused to cooperate with authorities in their efforts to stop the spread of child porn, drugs, and money laundering on the platform”
My conclusion: Fuck this guy. Let him rot in prison.
without reading this yet, i can tell you why elon is mad; he sees that posing as a free speech advocate while running an outfit promoting hate speech has consequences in today’s western world… at least, eventually.
Telegram is freedom of info for both sides of the coin. Possibly ‘was’ this could be the end of an era, both for truth and lies.
This guy can go fuck himself. Putin’s goonies (Orbán, Salvini, Le Pen, Farage and other clowns) will be yapping about “freedom of speech”, no doubt, but fuck them. The time of niceties is over. Elon Musk should be arrested too.
It was the only place I could have seen information and communications made by resistance movements in Palestine and now they made it illegal in EU but still no sanctions on Israel…
Only crypto bros, drug dealers and the kremlin are angry at this.
I wonder why that is.
Perhaps he cut a deal with France to defect from Russia and has to make it believable.
What’s going on is more than one thing. France would like that someone’s company operating in France to adhere to the French market rules.
And Russia not only does a lot of it’s disinformation war online via telegram in Europe, but I’ve heard rumors that the Russian army uses the app for stuff.
And lot of their Russian internal propaganda also runs via telegram.
So if France somehow gets access to that they would have a lot of information suddenly. Plus who knows what they found inside the private jet in gadgets and information.
Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies are relying on telegram, should be interesting.
Viewed as a political prisoner. Zuckerberg hasn’t been arrested. Its not justice if it’s selective.
Anyone not outraged by this is a fascist. Telegram is apolitical, and offers a platform for completely unregulated media and news, hence a completely free speech platform. Governments don’t like it because it doesn’t allow them to completely control the narrative.
It’s essentially how Russia’s army communicates.
Also, it’s FREAKING WILD how quick some GOP people were to headfake “free speech” when this dude simply broke a bunch of laws… I loathe conspiracies so I’ll just wonder aloud how many people in the US gov are compromised foreign agents, etc.
lmfao @ Snowden as he speaks from his comfortable (for the time being) accommodations in a country that is quickly moving toward the hell that it once was. Fuck you, Snowden.
I don’t have Twitter any more but I bet Musk is shittin’ himself. I read today that the list of his investors was revealed to have more than one shady character with ties to a dictator or two… Or twenty.
Now… I am ‘of the geez’ and, well… I’m a bit cranky today. So please forgive my comments. France should hold him long enough to extradite that sucker to the US where he can be sent to Guantanamo for a minute. In the interim, the West should use every tool available to drag Telegram for every morsel of ‘kompramat’ on every dirty bastard in, on, and around the entity and hold it. The social media ‘collective’ will develop an acute case of ‘butt pucker’, get with the program and start reigning in the insanity on their platforms.
Just my $0.02 USD
It was like an app for the dark web, and we all known the illegal activity that went on there….good to see Macron play hardball.