What is Telegram and why did its CEO, Pavel Durov, get shot in Paris?

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An arrest was made in Paris over the weekend of Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the famous messaging app Telegram. It is said that his platform is being used for illegal activities like drug trafficking and the distribution of pictures of child sexual abuse.

Durov was born in Russia but spent a lot of his childhood in Italy. He is a citizen of France, Russia, UK, and St. Kitts and Nevis, a country in the Caribbean. After coming in from Azerbaijan on Saturday, August 24, 2024, he was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport in France.

In a statement posted to its platform, Telegram said it abides by EU laws and its content moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.” Durov, the company added, “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe.”

Telegram says that more than 950 million people use it every day. In France, a lot of people use it to send messages, including some people who work in the presidential palace and the office that is investigating Durov. According to French investigators, the app has also been used by people who trade drugs and follow ISIS.

Durov and his brother Nikolai started Telegram in 2013. Telegram says that Pavel Durov backs the app “financially and ideologically, while Nikolai’s input is technological.”

Durov started VKontakte, which is Russia’s biggest social network before he started Telegram. After huge pro-democracy protests in Moscow at the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, the Russian government cracked down on the company.

Durov said that the government told VKontakte to shut down the online groups of Russian opposition campaigners. After that, it asked the platform to give it the personal information of users who took part in the 2013 uprising in Ukraine that led to the removal of a pro-Kremlin president.

But Durov sold his VKontakte shares in 2014 because the Russian government told him to. He also left the country. In an April interview with Tucker Carlson, a conservative talk show host, Durov said that Dubai was “the best place for a neutral platform like ours to be in if we want to make sure we can defend our users’ privacy and freedom of speech.” This is where Telegram is based now.

According to French media, Durov was arrested because his site was allegedly used for drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes. He hadn’t been charged yet on Monday afternoon, and not much was known about the case.

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French media said on Monday that on Sunday night, an investigating judge in France extended Durov’s arrest order. French law says that Durov can be held in jail for up to four days so that he can be questioned. The judges will then have to decide whether to charge him or let him go.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin in Russia, wouldn’t say anything about the news that Durov had been arrested in France.

During his daily press call on Monday, Peskov said, “We still don’t know what exactly Durov is being accused of.” “That hasn’t been said by the government officially yet.”

Peskov said, “Let’s wait until the charges are made public if they are made public.”

Officials in the Russian government are furious about Durov’s arrest. Some have said it was done for political reasons and shows how the West has different rules for free speech. Critics of the Kremlin are surprised by the uproar. In 2018, Russian authorities tried to stop Telegram but failed; they lifted the ban in 2020.

While Durov was being held, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” spoke out in support of him and shared the hashtag “#freePavel.”

In a post on its website, after he was arrested, Telegram said it follows EU law and that its moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.”

Telegram’s post said, “It is ridiculous to say that a platform or its owner are to blame for abuse of that platform.” “Almost a billion people around the world use Telegram to talk to each other and get important news.” We’re waiting for this problem to be solved quickly. The telegram is with all of you.

Western governments have often said that Telegram doesn’t moderate content well enough. Experts say this means that the messaging app could be used for money laundering, drug dealing, and sharing content related to the sexual exploitation of children.

Another researcher at Stanford University, David Thiel, who has looked into how online platforms are used for child exploitation, said that Telegram is “less secure and more lax in terms of policy and detection of illegal content” compared to other messaging apps.

Thiel also said that Telegram “appears unresponsive to law enforcement.” He added that the chat app WhatsApp “submitted over 1.3 million CyberTipline reports in 2023, but Telegram submits none.”

The owners of Telegram were fined 5.125 million euros ($5 million) in 2022 by Germany for not following German law. The Federal Office of Justice said that Telegram FZ-LLC hasn’t set up a legal way for people to report illegal content or named a group in Germany that can receive official messages.

German laws that govern big internet platforms say that both must be done.

Brazil temporarily shut down Telegram last year because it wouldn’t hand over information on neo-Nazi activity linked to a police investigation into the November school shootings.

In response to the arrest, Telegram said it follows EU law and that its moderation of material is “on par with industry standards and always getting better.”

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