Pavel Durovthe thirty-nine-year-old French-Russian founder of the Russian social networking platforms VK and the instant messaging platform Telegramwas arrested by French authorities on Saturday, August 24, at Paris Le Bourget airport. Durov is accused of being an accomplice in numerous illegal activities (child pornography and illegal pornography, scams, drug trafficking) that have been taking place for some time on the messaging application he administers. In fact, Telegram is without a moderation system and the French authority claims that Durov did not cooperate sufficiently with law enforcement to remove dangerous content.
This is the first ever case of arrest of the CEO of a major messaging platform with the accusation based on the modus operandi of the platform itself.
Comments on the arrest were not long in coming. The most indicative reaction is undoubtedly that of Ivan Zhdanov of the Anti-Corruption Center founded by the late Putin opponent Alexey Navalnyaccording to which the accusations by the French authorities are rather vague and weak and that Durov’s arrest should probably instead be sought in an attempt by the French authorities to have access to sensitive data contained in the app.
Telegram has always had a independent and politically unaligned politicswith its coded writing systems and extreme privacy applied as a company policy. But these very characteristics have made it the tool of choice for criminal and terrorist groupswho used it as a platform to move communications and money.
Always these characteristics of freedom and lack of political alignment have meant that the popular messaging platform has played a key role for many opposition groups against the authoritarian regimes prevailing in their countries (think of countries like Belarus, Russia and Iran) in carrying out democratic mobilization campaigns.
In an interview given to CNN years ago, Durov complained to American journalists that what he was in charge of VKontaktie (VK, also known as the “Russian Facebook”) in Russia had been pressured by the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and Russian security services to align VK with the Kremlin’s policies and cooperate with Russian security services to hunt down Putin’s opponents, but not only that. At the same time, the Western secret serviceshowever, they were imposing the same kind of pressure on him and Telegram regarding the fight against terrorism.
Despite this, in recent years Telegram has tried to adapt to a series of European Union directives (such as the fight against ISIS) but these initiatives were considered insufficient especially by the French authorities, who opted to arrest the founder of the platform. This story also happens while Telegram is under scrutiny by the EU which is verifying its actual diffusion: if it were to be classified as a large platform (at least 45 million users in the European territory) it would have to be subject to more stringent behavioral obligations. Previous surveys showed a diffusion of around 40 million people, therefore not far from the threshold to be considered a large platform.
Durov’s arrest is undoubtedly an event of a certain gravity that makes one reflect on the fact that in this historical era it is difficult for social media to maintain a real neutrality and equidistance than desired by the great powers.
