Since his arrest last month that led to an indictment, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has not spoken publicly. On Thursday night, he posted a lengthy message on his Telegram channel to share his feelings. What did he say?
Pavel Durov speaks out about his arrest
About a fortnight ago, Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at Le Bourget airportAfter being held in police custody, he has since been charged and is now subject to judicial supervision after being released on bail.
💡 Who is Pavel Durov?
While the person concerned had remained publicly silent until then, he published a message on Thursday evening on his personal Telegram channel to share his feelings about this situation. Thus, Pavel Durov describes his arrest as surprising, and for three reasons.
His first argument is that Telegram has an official representative in the European Union, and that “his email address is publicly available“. Furthermore, he claims that the French authorities could contact him personally in many ways and that he was also regularly invited to the French consulate in Dubai. Furthermore, “a direct line with Telegram to face the threat of terrorism in France” would have been put in place.
Finally, Pavel Durov believes that it would have been more relevant to take legal action against Telegram rather than against himself:
Using pre-smartphone laws to charge a CEO for crimes committed by third parties on the platform he runs is a misguided approach. Building technology is hard enough. No innovator will build new tools if they know they can be held personally liable for potential abuses of those tools.
The entrepreneur then goes on to explain that if an agreement cannot be reached with local authorities regarding a balance between privacy and security, Telegram chooses to leave the country. He thus takes the example of Russia, when the platform refused to hand over the “encryption keys” to the government.
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Areas for improvement
If Pavel Durov admits that Telegram is not perfecthe nevertheless attacks certain hasty judgments:
But the claims in some media outlets that Telegram is some kind of anarchic paradise are absolutely false. We remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports. We have hotlines with NGOs to handle urgent moderation requests faster.
Despite everything, he also recognizes that areas for improvement can also be found. He thus highlights “the sudden increase” to 950 million users, which has created growing pains and facilitated abuse. Promising to make improvement your personal goalhe says details of the work in question will be published shortly.
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Source: Telegram, Image: Steve Jennings (CC BY 2.0)
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Since 2021, I have devoted my free time to seriously training myself on cryptocurrencies in order to acquire as much knowledge and credibility as possible. I often have the opportunity to conduct interviews with influential figures in the blockchain industry. I also conduct in-depth analyses on Web3 themes to offer exclusive content to Cryptoast readers.
Vincent Maire
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