Over
the
weekend,
Telegram
founder
Pavel
Durov
was
arrested
at
a
Paris
airport
and
later
charged
by
the
Tribunal
Judiciaire
De
Paris
with
enabling
illegal
transactions,
distributing
child
abuse
material,
complicity
in
the
drug
trade,
and
failing
to
cooperate
with
law
enforcement.
This
is
clearly
a
big
moment.
Here
is
an
enormously
powerful
social
media
CEO
(Telegram
has
roughly
one
billion
users)
struggling
with
the
very
conspicuous
long
arm
of
the
nation-state.
Durov
fits
a
recent
pattern
of
governments
re-asserting
authority
over
networks
that
founders,
and
many
of
the
rest
of
us,
conceive
of
as
free-speech
havens
(common
spaces)
that
officials
have
little
right
to
touch.
Durov’s
arrest
has
generated
a
lot
of
conjecture,
debate,
conspiracy-theorizing
and
culture
war
rhetoric
in
the
last
48
hours.
Durov’s
case
is
a
revealing
flashpoint
in
the
free
speech
wars
of
the
modern
internet
and
the
larger
question
of
whether
we,
as
digital
citizens,
can
expect
public
commons
where
we
can
speak
freely
without
interference
from
what
are,
in
effect,
censors.
On
one
side
are
the
free
speech
advocates,
including
X
(formerly
Twitter)
boss
Elon
Musk,
who
argue
that
Durov’s
case
amounts
to
a
crackdown
on
open
discourse.
Musk
has
started
a
#FreePavel
campaign
and
brought
many
millions
with
him.
Interestingly,
Mark
Zuckerberg
chose
this
exact
moment
to
highlight
how
the
U.S.
leaned
on
Meta
during
the
COVID
pandemic
to
strip
“disinformation,”
seemingly
showing
solidarity
with
Durov’s
struggles
in
Paris.
Durov
has
become
a
hero
in
the
eyes
of
those
who
champion
an
internet
free
of
mediation,
including
those
in
cryptocurrency,
even
if
that
freedom
leads
to
people
using
that
network
for
all
kinds
of
morally
problematic
and
even
illegal
things.
But
Telegram,
which
is
the
channel
of
choice
for
nearly
everyone
in
Web3,
is
not
exactly
the
encrypted
nirvana
we
might
want,
ideally.
As
tech
journalist
Casey
Newton
explains:
“Telegram
is
often
described
as
an
‘encrypted’
messenger.
But
as
Ben
Thompson
explains
today,
Telegram
is
not
end-to-end
encrypted,
as
rivals
WhatsApp
and
Signal
are.
(Its
‘secret
chat’
feature
is
end-to-end
encrypted,
but
it
is
not
enabled
on
chats
by
default.
The
vast
majority
of
chats
on
Telegram
are
not
secret
chats.)
That
means
Telegram
can
look
at
the
contents
of
private
messages,
making
it
vulnerable
to
law
enforcement
requests
for
that
data.”
Durov
has
often
presented
Telegram
as
a
“secure
messenger,”
but
outside
of
its
secret
chat
function,
the
service
is
more
open
to
government
intrusion
than
Signal,
WhatsApp
and
iMessage.
Telegram
is
not
Bitcoin,
where
transactions
are
unstoppable.
It’s
not
a
blockchain,
which
accords
privacy
in
a
different
way
from
something
like
Telegram,
which,
structurally,
is
both
a
free
speech
haven
and
a
honeypot
for
intermediaries,
whether
criminal
or
governmental.
The
beauty
of
blockchains
is
we
don’t
have
to
debate
the
motivations
and
machinations
of
men
like
Elon
Musk,
Pavel
Durov,
and
Mark
Zuckerberg.
The
freedom
of
expression
is
baked
into
the
code.
The
free-speech
principles
at
play
in
Durov’s
case
should
clearly
have
the
crypto
community’s
support.
But
ideally
we
would
have
public
online
commons
that
are
genuinely
free
from
government
intrusion
and
the
whims
of
single
men,
however
well-meaning.
Note:
The
views
expressed
in
this
column
are
those
of
the
author
and
do
not
necessarily
reflect
those
of
CoinDesk,
Inc.
or
its
owners
and
affiliates.
