Stopping Telegram's Pavel Durov might be a smart move. Tech bosses care more about themselves than you | Chris Stokel-Walker

IThe shocking arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov as he stepped off his private jet at Bourget airport near Paris over the weekend is a stunning and unprecedented development: he faces alleged offences that could include facilitating fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promoting terrorism and cyberstalking.

He may not be an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg, but he is the CEO of a tech platform with 950 million monthly users and is the first big name in the tech sector to potentially find itself on the wrong side of the European Union’s increasingly strict laws and regulations in the digital sphere.

Durov, an icon among free speech advocates, has been living in Dubai since he refused to hand over user data to the Kremlin on his Facebook-like platform VKontakte (VK). However, despite becoming persona non grata for the Kremlin, he has never been a victim of the scandal. managed to shake off The suspicion among Western elites that he remains in collusion with the Russian state. The fact that the Russian government has called for his release, along with former President Dmitry Medvedev, telling it to the media “To all our common enemies now, he is Russian,” will further fuel those suspicions.

Perhaps because he is what Medvedev called a “man of the world who lives beautifully without a homeland,” Durov has persistently refused requests from police and governments to hand over data on his users. In an interview with right-wing American commentator Tucker Carlson, Durov proclaimed that Telegram users like their “independence,” “privacy” and “freedom.” But French authorities accused Durov of enabling the distribution of child abuse images and providing a vital organizational tool for organized crime.

Turning the other cheek to government requests made Durov’s platform popular with 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 messaging helps. It is no coincidence that riots in the UK earlier this summer were organised through Telegram groups, with images of the violence spread through the app and reaching other platforms. Anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate has called Telegram the “app of choice” for racists.

Unsurprisingly, Telegram has come to Durov’s defense. “Telegram respects 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 is responsible for the abuse of that platform.” But his arrest calls that stance into question.

What does this mean for other tech moguls? Those who anticipate that figures like Meta's Zuckerberg or even X owner Musk (who has made it his mission to annoy European authorities by disobeying their demands to crack down on disinformation) will soon be put in chains may have to wait a while. They are much bigger fish than Durov.

But the Russian’s arrest may signal that Europe’s historic inaction — at least in relation to its combative rhetoric — may be about to change. Europe has had a longstanding antagonistic relationship with Big Tech, which insists that 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 a nuisance by Silicon Valley: Europe has rarely walked the talk.

However, Durov's arrest is a sign that perhaps people are starting to talk about it. A European legislative package, which includes the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services ActIt has given the EU the clout to try to rein in the excesses of Big Tech. Action and fines have already been threatened. And now that executives know what was once unthinkable – that they might have to take personal responsibility for the actions of the companies they own – is at stake, it may well change their assessment of the risks involved. Zuckerberg probably knows that, given his high public profile, he is unlikely to find himself in handcuffs. Yet Musk’s panicked posts on his own platform suggest he is less safe, a consequence of his poor relationship with Europe’s regulators.

With the power that those in charge of global platforms have, it's no bad thing that they have a nagging fear in the back of their minds. If making an example of Durov is what it takes to make tech executives think twice before acting, that should be welcomed.

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