The shock arrest of Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov as he stepped off his private jet in Bourget airport near Paris over the weekend is a startling, unprecedented event: he faces alleged offences that could include enabling fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promotion of terrorism and cyberbullying.
He may not be an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg, but he is the CEO of a tech platform with 900 million monthly users, and is the first big name in tech to find himself potentially on the wrong side of the European Union’s increasingly strict laws and regulations in the digital sphere.
An icon among free speech advocates, Durov has been living in Dubai since his refusal to give up users’ data to the Kremlin on his Facebook-like platform, VKontakte (VK). Yet, despite becoming persona non grata with the Kremlin, he has never managed to shake the suspicion among western elites that he remains in league with the Russian state. The fact that the Russian government has called for his release, with the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, telling the media “for all our common enemies now, he is Russian”, will further fuel those suspicions.
Perhaps because he’s what Medvedev called a “man of the world who lives wonderfully without a motherland”, Durov has persistently refused requests by police and governments to hand over data on his users. In an interview with rightwing US commentator Tucker Carlson, Durov proclaimed that Telegram’s users like its “independence”, “privacy” and “freedom”. But the French authorities accused Durov of enabling the distribution of images of child abuse and providing a vital organisational tool for organised crime.
Turning the other cheek to government requests made Durov’s platform popular for those who wanted to avoid the scrutiny of other apps and digital services that regularly accede to such requests. The fact that Telegram provides encrypted messages helps. It’s not coincidental that the riots in the UK earlier this summer were organised through Telegram groups, with footage of the violence disseminated through the app and finding their way to other platforms. Anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate has called Telegram the “app of choice” for racists.
Unsurprisingly, Telegram has come out in defence of Durov. “Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is within industry standards,” the platform said in a statement. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” But his arrest challenges that position.
What does this mean for other tech moguls? Those envisaging that figures like Meta’s Zuckerberg or even X’s owner, Musk – who has made it his mission to needle European authorities, flouting their demands to crack down on disinformation – will soon be led away in shackles could be waiting a while. They are far bigger fish than Durov.
But the Russian’s arrest may signal that Europe’s historic inaction – at least relative to its fighting talk – may be about to change. Europe has had a long-running antagonistic relationship with big tech, which insists its attempt to enforce strong regulation designed to limit the harms of social media is a brake on innovation. Yet that antagonism has been seen as little more than an annoyance by Silicon Valley: Europe has rarely walked the walk.
Durov’s arrest, though, is a sign that it is perhaps starting to talk the talk. A European legislative package, including the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, has given the EU the strength to attempt to rein in big tech excesses. Action and fines have already been threatened. And now that executives know what was previously unthinkable – that they might have to take personal responsibility for the actions of the companies they own – is on the cards, it may well change their assessment of the risks involved. Zuckerberg probably knows that he’s unlikely, because of his elevated public profile, to find himself in handcuffs. Musk’s panicked posts on his own platform suggest he’s less certain, however, a consequence of his poor relationship with Europe’s regulators.
With the power those in charge of global platforms wield, it’s no bad thing for them to have a nagging fear in the back of their minds. If making an example of Durov is what it takes to get tech executives to think twice before acting, that must surely be welcomed.