The case against “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg” will have lasting effects
Editor’s note (August 28th 2024): This article was updated after Pavel Durov’s release from custody.
Soon after his private jet touched down on August 24th at Le Bourget airport, on the outskirts of Paris, Pavel Durov was arrested by French police. Next came a flurry of speculation as to the reasons behind the detention of the founder and boss of Telegram, a social-media platform. Elon Musk, the libertarian owner of X, framed it as part of a worldwide battle over free speech, posting that in Europe people will soon be “executed for liking a meme”. Others saw geopolitical motives, noting Telegram’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine, both as a disseminator of information and a military communication tool.
On August 28th French prosecutors placed Mr Durov under formal investigation over Telegram’s alleged failure to control illicit activity on the app, including the distribution of child sexual-abuse material (CSAM), and its refusal to co-operate with law enforcement. His lawyer issued a statement saying that “Telegram is in conformity with every aspect of European norms on digital matters.” Mr Durov was released from custody but required to post bail of €5m ($5.5m) and will not be allowed to leave France.
Mr Durov—who has been dubbed Russia’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook—left Russia ten years ago, complaining that he had been forced to sell his first social network, the Facebook-ish VKontakte, to Kremlin-friendly investors. He now lives in Dubai and is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, St Kitts and Nevis, his native Russia—and France. Until recently he seldom spoke to the media, preferring to communicate via topless selfies on Instagram.
Telegram, which Mr Durov founded 11 years ago, is a small player in much of the West. But globally it is the eighth-largest social-media platform, claiming 900m monthly users, making it 50% bigger than X. Three-quarters of internet users in Russia have it (see chart). Telegram does not make money yet, but hopes to within the next year or so, after introducing advertising in 2021. Though often described as a messaging app, its “channels” with thousands of members make it a formidable broadcast platform. It occupies a “unique niche” in Russian media, says Gregory Asmolov of King’s College London, who says it is the only place where Russians can get news (both real and fake) about Ukraine.
Mr Durov is idolised by some free-speech advocates, who fear that the internet is increasingly targeted by censors. On August 27th Mr Zuckerberg revealed that in 2021 the American government “repeatedly pressured” his company to remove content related to covid-19, including humour and satire. The European Commission is investigating X for allegedly not complying with its rules on misinformation, and in Britain there are calls for stricter laws on the spread of malicious content after riots in the country.
But Telegram’s hands-off approach to moderation has allowed content to flourish that is straightforwardly illegal. A report last year by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory identified large groups sharing CSAM on the platform. Child exploitation is one area where there is little argument about free speech. “In practice, I do not think that the rules concerning CSAM are meaningfully different across Europe, the UK or the United States,” says David Kaye, a former UN rapporteur on freedom of expression now at the University of California, Irvine.
Although illegal material exists on all platforms, it is unclear what steps, if any, Telegram takes to remove it. The firm reportedly has a staff of around 50; Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has about 40,000 in its safety and security teams alone. “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants,” the company’s website states.
For French prosecutors, Telegram may present a unique opportunity to track down online criminals. Although the platform bills itself as “more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp”, the reverse is true. Most messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted, meaning that they are visible to the company—and any government that successfully ordered it to hand them over.
Telegram says it has never handed over information to any government. But recently Russia has discovered the identities of previously anonymous Telegram users, leading to prosecutions. Western governments, for their part, could be tempted to lean on Telegram for information on Russia. Even though it is not very secure, it is used operationally by the Russian military, which is short of alternatives, says Mr Asmolov of King’s College. Mr Durov has encouraged speculation that the American government might be interested in what happens on his platform. In April he gave a rare interview to Tucker Carlson, a right-wing American journalist, in which he complained of receiving “too much attention from the FBI”, which he said had tried to recruit one of his engineers to install a back door into Telegram.
Whatever happens to Mr Durov, the episode is likely to be cited in future by governments seeking to defend their own crackdowns on social-media platforms, justified or not. Countries such as Turkey have demanded that social networks have local executives based in-country, in what some have called “hostage laws”. On August 17th X said that it would close its office in Brazil, after a judge there threatened an executive with arrest if the company did not comply with an order to take down content that the Brazilian courts considered misinformation and hate speech. The case against Mr Durov is set to have a lasting impact. ■
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