Will Telegram CEO's arrest make social media bosses worried?

Pavel Durov was quickly arrested by police when he arrived at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on his private jet last Saturday. Yesterday, he was formally charged with facilitating widespread criminal activity on the messaging platform.

This incident certainly has far-reaching international implications, not only for diplomatic relations between the parties involved, for the messaging platform with nearly 1 billion users, but also for other global tech giants.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is under arrest and prosecution in France. Photo: GI

Controversies on all sides

First of all, there is and will be a lot of controversy about every aspect of this arrest.

Telegram has denied the allegations against Durov. In a statement, the company said: "It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owners are responsible for the misuse of that platform."

Billionaire Elon Musk has called on France to “free Pavel” to prevent a threat to democracy. Paul Graham, co-founder of Silicon Valley’s leading startup Y Combinator, said this would damage the country’s chances of becoming a “major startup hub”.

In addition, Durov's arrest is also considered by many parties as a political issue, when the relationship between France as well as Western countries in general with his birth country, Russia, is at a record low, due to the war in Ukraine and many other geopolitical issues.

As is known, Telegram is a popular messaging and social networking application in the world . This encrypted application is particularly influential in Russia and Ukraine, widely used by both sides to report news and propaganda in the conflict between the two countries.

Those interested in the political implications of the arrest are pointing to the fact that other Western messaging apps like Meta's WhatsApp are also encrypted and have three times the number of users, while X's hate speech and other problematic content is also increasingly widespread.

Meanwhile, there is also no suggestion that Durov himself was directly involved in creating any illegal content on his platform.

So Durov’s unique background may explain why he’s in this situation. Unlike other tech giants, Durov doesn’t have American citizenship. The famous American journalist Tucker Carlson said in a statement on X that France couldn’t have arrested Durov without the US government’s consent.

There is also a huge amount of conflict over social media issues. Many sides are calling for freedom of speech, even fighting for those who are “censored” because of their “political views”. However, on the other hand, they are also introducing the strictest controls on these platforms.

In Europe, for example, recent regulations such as the Media Freedom Act aim to prevent platforms from arbitrarily removing or banning news producers and their content, while the Digital Services Act requires these platforms to provide mechanisms to remove “illegal material.”

Will the "tech giants" have to worry?

However, it is also possible that Durov's arrest is just a move to tighten the law on social platforms in particular, and technology giants in general in France, as well as the US and many other countries are doing. It marks the first drastic move on the level of responsibility that social networks must bear for the content on their platforms.

But why was Durov targeted? Aside from the political factors mentioned above, the reason may be that Telegram, while large enough to have a global presence, is not as “untouchable” as Meta, which owns such massive platforms as Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.

But regardless, Durov's prosecution will certainly spur more countries and organizations to hold platforms accountable for illegal content or provide details about the users posting it.

Conversely, it could also make tech platforms think more seriously about criminal content on their platforms. It is not difficult to find criminal activities such as fraud, child pornography, drug trafficking, and the dissemination of misinformation and even fabrication on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and many other platforms.

In short, one lesson the tech industry can learn from this week's developments is that social media giants can no longer continue to operate in the current "legal vacuum."

Hoang Hai

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/vu-bat-giu-ceo-telegram-se-khien-cac-ong-chu-mang-xa-hoi-phai-lo-lang-post309772.html