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Telegram founder Pavel Durov 'arrested at French airport after stepping off private plane'

Telegram messaging app founder and CEO Pavel Durov has reportedly been arrested at a French airport after stepping off private plane.

Police swooped on the billionaire shortly after landing at the Bourget airport, outside Paris, following a flight from Azerbaijan, French outlet TF1 info reported, citing an unnamed source.

Durov was travelling aboard his private jet and had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France, the news site added.

The 39-year-old tech tycoon was reportedly arrested at around 8pm local time while accompanied by his bodyguard. ...

Durov Founded the app in 2013 along with his brother Nikolai. It now has 950 million active users who can send messages, photos and videos, take part in chats for groups of up to 200,000 people and broadcast to unlimited audiences.

Intended as a rival to WhatsApp, Telegram users can have 'secret chats', in which messages are stored on devices rather than the cloud, and messages can also be set to self-destruct after a certain time period.

Mr Durov who is estimated to be worth around £12 billion, said in an interview earlier this year Telegram would remain a 'neutral platform' and not a 'player in geopolitics.'

But the UK government has insisted social media companies such as Telegram must do more to stop extremists using their services for criminal means.

The campaigning organisation Counter Extremism Project said Telegram has taken some action to reduce the use of its platform by terrorists but commented on its website 'it is clear that more can and should be done.'

OK, rather like with the CIA's attempted assassination of Trump, this gives Durov and Telegram much more credibility.

The Russian tech entrepreneur was detained at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday and will appear in court on Sunday evening. French authorities had reportedly issued an arrest warrant against him, arguing that insufficient moderation allows for Telegram to be widely used by criminals.

The news of Durov’s apparent prosecution has raised concerns online, including suggestions that it could be politically motivated.

“Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram. But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech,” Carlson wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday. “It was a Western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member, that locked him away.”

Durov’s arrest is “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies,” Carlson argued. “Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world.”

Carlson recorded a rare interview with Durov in April, in which the Telegram owner spoke about his disagreements with the Russian government, as well as the pressure he faced in the US. He said that the American government had wanted him to set up a surveillance “backdoor” on his messaging service, and he refused.

X owner Elon Musk also condemned the reported arrest. “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he wrote in a comment to the news story.

French media reported that his detention was related to an investigation opened into Telegram’s role in spreading child pornography and the platform’s alleged refusal to cooperate with authorities in cracking down.

French media reported that his detention was related to an investigation opened into Telegram’s role in spreading child pornography and the platform’s alleged refusal to cooperate with authorities in cracking down.

So, it's not a "free speech issue", rather a "refusal to release Epstein's clients list" issue.

RWSGFY says

French media reported that his detention was related to an investigation opened into Telegram’s role in spreading child pornography and the platform’s alleged refusal to cooperate with authorities in cracking down.

So, it's not a "free speech issue", rather a "refusal to release Epstein's clients list" issue.

sure, i believe them…. NOT

in no small irony, pavel durov, the russian founder of the widely used text messaging system telegram, who fled russia to avoid interference in his business and the privacy of his users has been arrested. in france. because make no mistake, the EU has become the point of the spear on intrusive mandate that all media, social media, and communications must be subject to the state and to the supra-national groups that organize it. the EU has done nothing but push mandates for surveillance and censorship, for hate speech and “misinformation” which increasingly has come to mean “and facts we don’t like.”

he made the (extremely unwise) choice to allow his private jet to land in france for reasons unknown. i suspect there’s a story there as he’s not a fool and must have known what would happen.

the french cops swooped, he’s now jailed, and facing 20 years for the heinous crime of “allowing people to speak privately to one another in a manner the EU cannot readily surveil.”

governments have been pressuring him to allow their police and intelligence groups access for years.

the west has become what we used to vilify china and the soviets for.




durov has repeatedly said refused to censor and spy and moved to dubai to escape their reach because he wants to “run a neutral platform.”

those seeking free speech are being chased to dubai. dubai. seriously, let that one sink in for a moment.

but returning to the west resulted in the (however you say “gestapo” in french) snatching him and tossing him in prision. ...

this stands as the diametric opposite of the US idea of the US and section 230, “the 26 words that created the internet.”




... the US has obviously found lots of ways to flout 230 or pretend it’s all “friendly and consensual” in the sense of “get in line or we’ll destroy you” being a free choice among friends, but the EU is not even playing at innocent. they are outright saying “we rule here, do what we say, no questions, it’s the law.” ...

the same people who told you lock down, mask up, 6 feet apart, safe and effective, mostly peaceful, russian disinfo, and 400 other weapon’s grade whoppers want the right to decide what is “misinformation” and to censor it.

they claim you have no right to speak it.

it’s a pretty astonishing take.

“shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;”

has become “unless we disagree with what you say.”

If Telegram plays ball, Pavel’s problems will magically disappear! All the platform need do is build a few government backdoors into the Telegram system, for safety, not for monitoring and censoring citizens, no, never.

It’s unusual for a corporation’s CEO to be arrested for crimes committed by others. Media calls it “unprecedented.” We can compare Pavel’s predicament with Mark Zuckerberg’s. Zuckerberg learned how to play ball in 2020, generously donated to Democrats, and, despite originally warning employees not to take the jabs, hired a battalion of security-state drones and built the government its own misinformation portal page during the pandemic.

Zuckerberg has never been detained, not even for the child pornography rings running rampant on Facebook. Nor detained for anything else, since he’s a good little deep-state doggie.

Other corporate bigwigs evade prosecution even for crimes they commit themselves. Take the pharmaceutical industry, for example, whose executives escape detention even after pleading guilty to literally killing people through fraud, like opioid maker Purdue Pharma, which just paid a fine (using money collected from customers) to the government.

Maybe Telegram should hire pharma lawyers. In any event, the French can only legally hold Pavel for 96 hours without charging him. So we’ll see the government’s next move soon.

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which was pretty much a ponderous, inky mess for a while. Still, governments spent centuries trying to rein it back in. For example, in 1662, Great Britain passed “An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses.”

The 1662 Act, which required citizens to purchase licenses to legally own and operate printing presses, was repeatedly extended and wasn’t repealed until 1863, even though it was initially supposed to be in effect for only two years.

The British government justified the 1662 Act by citing the circulation of disinformation that caused public panic and unrest (although they hadn’t yet invented that Orwellian term ‘disinformation’). You could quibble with comparing Telegram to the printing press, but you get the idea.

This is Neoliberal Fascism.

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