Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's Arrest Is Part of a Global War on Free Speech

Governments around the world seek to suppress ideas and control communications channels.

It's appropriate that, days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov's arrest, then, stands as less of a one-off than as part of a concerted effort by governments, including those of nominally free countries, to control speech.

"Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov is expected to appear in court Sunday after being arrested by French police at an airport near Paris for alleged offences related to his popular messaging app," reported France24.

A separate story noted claims by Paris prosecutors that he was detained for "running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud, as well as the refusal to communicate information to authorities, money laundering and providing cryptographic services to criminals."

Freedom for Everybody or for Nobody

Durov's alleged crime is offering encrypted communications services to everybody, including those who engage in illegality or just anger the powers that be. But secure communications are a feature, not a bug, for most people who live in a world in which "global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023," according to Freedom House. Fighting authoritarian regimes requires means of exchanging information that are resistant to penetration by various repressive police agencies.

"Telegram, and other encrypted messaging services, are crucial for those intending to organise protests in countries where there is a severe crackdown on free speech. Myanmar, Belarus and Hong Kong have all seen people relying on the services," Index on Censorship noted in 2021.

And if bad people occasionally use encrypted apps such as Telegram, they use phones and postal services, too. The qualities that make communications systems useful to those battling authoritarianism are also helpful to those with less benign intentions. There's no way to offer security to one group without offering it to everybody.

Durov's Second Clash With an Authoritarian Government

A CNN report on the case (I watch so you don't have to) weirdly linked Durov to Russian President Vladimir Putin, insinuating the two are conspiring. But as Reuters helpfully points out, "Telegram, based in Dubai, was founded by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has sold."

The Internet Archive contains links to 2014 posts by Durov boasting, in Russian, that he refused to surrender information about Ukrainian users of VKontakte to the Putin regime and balked at barring the late Alexei Navalny's opposition group from the service.

"I'm afraid there is no going back," Durov told TechCrunch after leaving Russia to build Telegram. "Not after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities. They can't stand me."

Telegram was initially blocked in Russia, but the ban was unpopular and unsuccessful, and soon dropped. The service is now widely used by both Russians and Ukrainians as a digital battleground in their war.

Given that Telegram was founded by a free speech champion who fled his home country after refusing to monitor and censor speech for the authorities, it's very easy to suspect that Pavel Durov has run afoul of authoritarians operating under a different flag, no matter the protestations of French President Emmanuel Macron that the arrest "is in no way a political decision" and that France "is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication."

This is the same Macron, after all, who last year, after riots he insisted were coordinated online, huffed "We have to think about the social networks, about the bans we'll have to put in place. When things get out of control, we might need to be able to regulate or cut them off."

More recently, free speech groups objected to European Union threats to censor political content on X—specifically, an interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The U.S. Has Its Own Free Speech Concerns

Matters are better in the United States, but not so much (as we have every right to demand). The Twitter Files and the Facebook Files revealed serious pressure brought to bear by the U.S. government on social media companies to stifle dissenting views and inconvenient (to the political class) news stories. If any further confirmation was needed, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on August 26 regretting the company's role in succumbing to pressure to censor content.

"In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire," Zuckerberg wrote to Chairman Jim Jordan (R–Ohio). "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it."

Zuckerberg also admitted to suppressing reports about the incriminating contents of Hunter Biden's laptop at the FBI's behest. "We're ready to push back if something like this happens again," he promised.

Fighting a Free Speech Recession

Durov's arrest isn't an isolated incident. It comes amid what Jacob Mchangama, (founder of the Danish think tank Justitia and executive director of The Future of Free Speech) calls "a free speech recession." He warns that "liberal democracies, rather than constituting a counterweight to the authoritarian onslaught, are themselves contributing to the free-speech recession."

"Recession" might be too soft a word to describe a phenomenon that has governments attempting to suppress ideas and arresting entrepreneurs who operate neutral communications channels. These are harsh policies with real costs in terms of human freedom.

Telegram didn't respond to a request for comment, but in a public statement said, "it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform."

In a post from March, Pavel Durov himself commented, "All large social media apps are easy targets for criticism due to the content they host." He vowed, "we shall solve any potential challenges the same way we do everything else — with efficiency, innovation and respect for privacy and freedom of speech."

Durov's arrest shows that he, like all champions of free expression, must wage their battles for liberty against the active opposition of government officials even in nominally free countries. Free speech is as important as ever, but more besieged than it has been in a long time.