French authorities said Monday that they had arrested Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov for failing to moderate illegal child abuse activity on the messaging app, sparking a fresh debate over free speech on social media and what tech companies should do to limit harmful content.
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Pavel Durov’s arrest linked to Telegram’s alleged inability to moderate ‘child sex crimes’
“At the heart of the case is the absence of moderation and cooperation on the part of the platform,” Bernigaud said, “especially in the fight against child sex crimes.”
Durov, a Russian-born billionaire who lives in Dubai, was detained over the weekend at the Bourget airport outside Paris as he landed from Azerbaijan in his private jet, French TV channel TF1 said Saturday night. He is a dual citizen of the United Arab Emirates and France, according to his company.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Durov’s arrest took place as part of an “ongoing judicial investigation,” and that politics had no part to play in the arrest.
“France is more than anything attached to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation and to the spirit of enterprise,” Macron said in a post on X. “It will remain so.”
Telegram did not immediately return a request for comment.
Telegram is one of the most popular messaging apps globally, with more than 950 million users. French newspaper Le Monde reported that French authorities are investigating the dissemination of child pornography content, cyberbullying and organized crime on Telegram.
Telegram is one of a number of social media and messaging apps to face complaints about insufficient moderation or failure to act against child sex abuse content, fake news, disinformation, hate speech, and extremist groups and ideologies promoting violence.
Rights and monitoring groups have accused Facebook owner Meta of contributing to real-world violence against the Rohingya community in Myanmar by failing to act against the spread of fake news and hate speech on its platforms.
Meanwhile, a UNESCO study in 2022 concluded that nearly half of Holocaust-related content shared publicly on Telegram contained denial or distortion, a rate higher than Twitter, TikTok or Facebook.
Durov’s high-profile arrest drew condemnation from other influential tech figures.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, compared it to “being executed for liking a meme.” Chris Pavlovski, the CEO of Rumble Video, said France had threatened his online video platform and had crossed “a red line” by taking action against Duroc “reportedly for not censoring speech.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.