The Arrest of Pavel Durov Raises Awkward Questions

The Arrest of Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of the Telegram messaging and social media app, has been arrested in France for not complying with official demands to regulate user-generated content on his platform. A warrant issued by France’s Ofmin, which is responsible for preventing violence against minors, cites Durov’s alleged offences, including aiding fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, child pornography, and promoting terrorism.

The arrest of Pavel Durov, the 39-year-old Durov, who holds citizenship in France, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the United Arab Emirates, is poised to ignite a fierce debate between free speech advocates and those pushing for regulation. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, was among the first to come to Durov’s defence, tweeting ‘Liberte. Liberte! Liberte?’ as the news broke. Musk also questioned why Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t faced arrest for the use of Instagram by paedophiles, suggesting that ‘Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but no arrest for Zuck, as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data… he already caved into censorship pressure.’

For many advocates of free speech, Durov’s arrest for running a platform where controversial discussions take place seems like a throwback to outdated methods of dealing with modern issues. Some critics even claim that French authorities are mimicking the Kremlin’s failed attempts from 2014 when the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) sought access to user data from Durov’s previous social media venture, vKontakte, which was akin to a Russian Facebook.

Durov firmly resisted this demand, ultimately selling his company to more compliant owners and leaving Russia. Now based in Dubai, he launched Telegram, a communication and social media app designed to operate without censorship or government control. Durov shared with Tucker Carlson in April that Telegram’s 900 million active users appreciate the platform for its independence, privacy, and freedom.

In 2018, the Kremlin tried to block access to Telegram in Russia, claiming it was a platform for ‘terrorism and extremism.’ Russian authorities engaged in a lengthy battle, attempting to shut down servers that hosted Telegram, but ultimately they abandoned the effort. Ironically, Telegram is now utilized not just by high-ranking Russian officials but also by extreme nationalist bloggers and opposition activists. Furthermore, it serves as one of the few remaining channels for independent media to connect with supporters in Russia and Belarus, as well as throughout the former Soviet Union. ‘Telegram has also become the largest source of information in Ukraine,’ tweeted Iuliia Mendel, who was the press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky and met Durov alongside her boss. ‘It is [where] Ukrainians get most of their news.’ A recent survey indicated that 69 per cent of Russians consider Telegram their primary news source, and the platform boasts over 300 million users in India.

Christo Grozev, known for his investigations with the Bellingcat open-source intelligence network that have revealed Kremlin corruption, was once a strong advocate for Telegram’s independence. However, following Durov’s arrest, he tweeted that ‘unfortunately, his refusal to cooperate with the FSB in support of freedom of speech has been completely offset by his refusal to cooperate with others [intelligence agencies] to prevent the misuse of Telegram for harmful purposes.’ In contrast, other messaging apps like Signal, which is preferred by the Ukrainian military, offer much stronger encryption than Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, Telegram’s posts and messages are only end-to-end encrypted if users manually enable that feature, and only a small percentage do.

Pro-Ukraine bloggers have delighted in the news because Telegram is also used for such dark purposes as Russian ultranationalist propaganda and Russian military commanders’ communications. The Russian government, which itself hounded Durov into exile, has also protested his arrest. ‘He thought his biggest problems were in Russia and left’, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel. ‘He wanted to be a brilliant “citizen of the world,” living well without a homeland… He miscalculated. To our common enemies, he is still Russian – unpredictable and dangerous, of different blood.’

Though Durov – like Elon Musk – has consistently positioned himself as a free speech absolutist, in reality, Telegram’s user guidelines ban ‘terrorist content, scams, illegal pornography or the promotion of violence.’ Telegram also removed Isis-linked channels in 2019, and white supremacist groups linked to the storming of the US Capitol building in 2021.

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There has been speculation that Durov’s arrest is linked to his most recent trip to Baku, Azerbaijan, where he reportedly attempted to meet with Vladimir Putin during a state visit last week. In recent weeks the Kremlin has begun suppressing access to YouTube and WhatsApp in Russia in the wake of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion. There is speculation that Durov may have been attempting to persuade Putin to leave Telegram alone – but the Russian leader refused to meet him. The fact that Durov flew from Baku to Paris in his private plane, knowing that the French had a longstanding warrant out for his arrest, is one of the unanswered mysteries of this story.

In any case, the arrest of Pavel Durov in France is set to raise some awkward questions. Do the French authorities believe that paedophiles, fascists and Islamists will somehow cease to communicate, or indeed cease to exist if the founder of Telegram is put in jail? Telegram may not be widely used in the UK, but Durov’s arrest throws current UK free speech debates into sharp focus too. In a supposedly free society, what is the proper relationship between the authorities and internet speech, and who is responsible for policing it?