Key facts:
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Crypto communities rally behind Durov, donating millions in TON for digital freedom.
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Tech industry figures denounce attacks on freedom of expression.
French authorities arrested Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Saturday night, sparking a global backlash.
For a while, the end-to-end encrypted Telegram app, pledged to never disclose its users’ information, establishing itself as an alternative to American messaging platforms, which have been criticized for commercially exploiting users’ personal data.
Furthermore, being based in the United Arab Emirates, Telegram has been protected from the strict moderation laws that have been put in place in many Western countries, where large platforms are pressured to remove allegedly illegal content. However, its CEO has been arrested and accused of allowing users to use the platform to spread neo-Nazi, pedophile and terrorism-related content, as has been done in the past. CryptoNews reported previously.
Amid the controversy, millions of messages on social media indicate that public opinion differs considerably from the accusations and the action taken by the authorities. Many people defend the freedom of expression that Telegram offers and criticise attempts at censorship that they consider unfair and disproportionate. The situation raises a complex debate on the responsibility of platforms in moderating content and protecting users’ rights.
Twitter owner Elon Musk was among the first to voice his disagreement with Durov’s arrest. a series of messages in which he has expressed that Content moderation imposed by governments on social media platforms is nothing more than censorship. He also shares memes in which is shown as a defender of freedom of expression. And to the question of why Durov was arrested and not Mark Zuckerberg, Elon answers: “Because he has already given in to the pressure of censorship.”
“Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but there is no arrest for Zuck as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data.”
Elon Musk, owner of the social network X.
Like Musk, thousands of others are posting tweets with the hashtag FreeDurov. All in defense of the protection of freedom of expression and digital rights. Among them Justin Sun, founder of the Tron network, pledged to donate $1 million in funding to create a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to free Telegram’s CEO.
Global solidarity and the fight for freedom of expression
Voices calling for freedom of expression are multiplying throughout the digital space. In Spain, the lawyer specializing in digital affairs, Cris Carrascosa details What the French Court says: “Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools proposed by Telegram (such as disposable numbers or cryptocurrencies) makes him an accomplice to drug trafficking, pedophilia or fraud.”
According to Carrascosa, “it is serious to hold the director of a platform responsible for everything that happens on it.”
For his part, the economist and columnist Juan Ramón Rallo explained on his channel on YouTube Why the European Union wants to kill Telegram arresting Pavel Durov. “In recent years, the political oligarchy has launched a new offensive against new platforms that amplify our Freedom of Expression,” he said, adding that recently the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, threatened the owner of X, Elon Musk, that Brussels would monitor possible “risks” for the publication of content “that incites hatred.”
In this way, the old flame of the debate on censorship and freedom of expression on the Internet has been rekindled. This is what the former CIA agent, Edward Snowdenwho calls Durov’s arrest an attack on human rights basics of expression and association.
“I am shocked and deeply saddened that Macron has gone so far as to take hostages as a means of accessing private communications. This degrades not only France, but the world.”
Edward Snowden, political activist.
Meanwhile, Communities are also mobilizing under the slogan #DigitalResistanceuniting voices from various sectors that advocate a repression of freedoms that, whatever its geopolitical origin, should not be tolerated.
The voice of former US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sounds like a wake-up call: defending freedom of expression is more imperative than ever. In the same vein, British politician Nigel Farage qualified the arrest as “concerning,” suggesting that every digital platform faces the challenge of containing bad actors, but not at the cost of sacrificing fundamental rights. For his part, the French politician Florian Philippot accused to show his country its “tyrannical face”, reaffirming that this arrest is not just an attack on one person, but a frontal attack on freedom of expression as a whole.
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