Pavel Durov’s arrest is not a free speech hill to die on | Opinion

When word broke that the billionaire Telegram CEO Pavel Durov had been arrested in France over the last weekend in August, it became a flashpoint in the global battle over freedom of speech. But then the charges came, including that Telegram had protected users who shared pornographic images, among other crimes.

By the time the charges were announced; however, the internet’s staunchest defenders of free speech ideals had already taken to social media platforms, such as the X platform (former Twitter), to argue that Durov’s arrest was proof of a sinister plot by behind the scenes French and western elites.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a former independent presidential candidate in the 2024 election, shared a similar sentiment:

Elon Musk called these “dangerous times” in a post on X.

French President Emanuel Macron, under fire that the action had been a political arrest, said it was run-of-the-mill law enforcement activities and not politically motivated. After the revelations in the charging document, it became clear that those who came quickly to Durov’s defense could be portrayed by a press corps ironically contemptuous as defenders of pedophilia.

The arrest 

Durov was arrested as part of an investigation by French authorities after allegations that the messaging service permitted crimes to occur on its platform. Durov said in April that governments have tried to collect information but that the app should remain neutral and not a geopolitical player.

Now, the self-professed libertarian has a cybersecurity gendarmerie unit, and France’s national anti-fraud police are grilling him while he sits in detention and awaits his first court appearance. 

And since Telegram stores data on its servers, unlike other privacy-focused messaging apps like Signal, which encrypts client-side, refusing to comply with data requests can open the service up to enforcement actions. 

The wider context

Defenders of free speech were already on edge, and perhaps rightfully so. European laws on the books could be seen as an attack on free speech rights, and this is precisely what defenders of free speech were lashing out against when they heard of Durov’s arrest.

For instance, one such law is the Digital Services Act, a primary threat to free speech worldwide. It has been designed to force social media companies to censor users who post content the authorities deem to be disinformation or too extreme. Laws like the DSA are slippery, but Durov’s is not the hill to die on. Yet, too many are lining up to do so. 

John Turley, Professor of Public Interest at George Washington University, told Fox News: “It is like arresting AT&T CEO, because the mob used the telephone to do its business.” The problem with Turley’s analogy is that AT&T is known for sharing information with the government in at least the Fairview program. Elon Musk, too, draws a line at illegal activity.

Durov is different because he is an “anything goes” tech tycoon. 

The real battlefield over free speech

Instead of helping in the fight against censorship, free speech defenders hurt it, showing they lack discernment and will throw their hat in the ring to defend the sexual exploitation of children, even if they did so by accident. The battle over free speech won’t be fought over the administrator of a platform censoring or not censoring information and being arrested or not arrested.

The battle over free speech will be fought—indeed, it is being fought already—over our freedom to access technology that preserves privacy without the need for a middleman. For instance, a platform like Signal encrypts messages on the client side, and the messenger service acts more as a relay, never having access to the encrypted messages sent across its network.

Telegram is a centralized service whose administrators have access to information that could aid serious criminal investigations. If they didn’t want that responsibility, they should have then designed better privacy-preserving tech. For whatever reason, they chose instead to mostly market their app as private rather than make it truly so. 

As for free speech defenders, their battle is elsewhere: defending decentralized tech that provides privacy without reliance on middlemen who can be strong-armed and compromised by governments.