“According to the French televisions TF1 and BFM, the local police arrested Pavel Durov, the head of the Telegram social network. The reason is supposed to be that Telegram does not sufficiently combat criminal content sent by its users,” Jana Magdoňová explains.
Read also
The company itself rejected such a thing in a statement to the media, saying that it complies with all European laws, including the new Regulation on digital services, and that Pavel Durov himself has nothing to hide. “The network also called it absurd that its owner should be responsible for what happens on it,” adds Jan Cibulka.
Who is Pavel Durov?
Russian-born and billionaire Pavel Durov is the founder of the social network Vkontakte. “It is precisely because of her that he came into conflict with the Russian regime in the past, when he refused to delete the profiles of opposition politicians and release information about Ukrainian users who protested against the then pro-Russian President Yanukovych. Durov then moved to Dubai, from where he runs Telegram,” explains Magdoňová.
Telegram originally started mainly as a chat tool, but over time it has added a number of features that move it closer to a social network. It is possible to create content distribution groups on it, which can have hundreds of thousands of members. “And now it also recommends to people which groups they might like based on which discussions they participate in,” says Cibulka.
The combination of chat and social features makes Telegram very popular, both in India and in Eastern Europe. It should have over 900 million monthly active users worldwide.
Illegal content
According to analyst Josef Šlerka, who investigates Telegram groups, there is a wide range of content on Telegram, from completely harmless, through misinformation or depicted violence to outright illegal content. In the past, the Investigace.cz server wrote about Telegram groups where people can order drugs or, for example, attack someone.
“It was probably also the case of the recent attempted arson attack in Prague, the person in question was recruited by the Russian secret service on Telegram. And similarly, according to Šlerka, terrorists were radicalized in some Telegram groups in the past, including the person who murdered in front of the Slovak club Tepláreň,” points out Magdoňová.
Encrypted application
Pavel Durov|photo: Albert Gea, Reuters
“Telegram has built a relatively unique position in the sense that it connects a large number of people and at the same time completely deliberately does not address the majority of problematic content,” Cibulka continues, adding that Telegram also presents itself as an encrypted application that protects the privacy of its users.
“Unlike Signal or Whatsapp, the content of Telegram groups is not encrypted, the creators of the application have full access to it,” adds Magdoňová, according to which users must explicitly turn on end-to-end encryption for a specific chat and it does not work in such popular groups.
“Which can also play a role, because the moment creators know about illegal content and can find it, they should take action against it. In the case of applications with end-to-end encryption, even their operator cannot see the content and therefore cannot search for the illegal one. But Telegram has access to the content of its users in the vast majority of cases,” adds Cibulka.
Propaganda profiles
“But at the same time, they don’t hide the fact that they mostly refuse to moderate it. It also often does not meet the demands of the security forces. With regard to the residence in the United Arab Emirates and the British Virgin Islands, he was fine with it, at least until this moment,” says Magdoňová.
Is the arrest of the founder of Telegram an attack on freedom of speech, as the owner of the social network X, Elon Musk, for example, talks about it?
Read also
“The app itself continues to work and it doesn’t look like anything has changed. It is true that it is used by people all over the world, including politicians. That is why, for example, Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev writes on it, Russian propaganda profiles, but also Ukrainian representatives or even military bloggers, who share behind-the-scenes information on the development of the war caused by the Russian attack on Ukraine,” explains Cibulka.
Banning the application would undoubtedly affect a large number of people, but there are no reports that the French prosecutor’s office would seek such a thing. “According to the available information, this is more about the moderation of illegal content, which all large social networks are forced to do,” concludes Magdoňová.
