Durov was naturalized as a French citizen in August 2021, giving him European Union citizenship.[4]Le Monde described the naturalisation as “mysterious”, since Durov had not resided in France apart from brief visits. Le Monde suggested that Durov was naturalised via the rarely used “merit foreigner” procedure that is awarded directly by the French government to people viewed to have contributed exceptionally to France’s international influence or international economic relations. Durov officially changed the French version of his name to Paul du Rove.[1] In April 2021, he received United Arab Emirates citizenship.[3]
Durov claims to have fathered more than 100 children via sperm donation in 12 nations since 2010.[73][74]
This is all state level national security related and as such, feels like the usual ways of handling/understanding etcetera…
(Example: that this is a criminal case, with evidence, procedures)… are likely window dressing…
…figuring out wtf is actually happening, if it ever comes out; will be either lucky or because someone’s dogged determination… …and even then will be hard to take at face value. (Or may only happen in decades)
I’m pretty sure someone at the NSA is very angry at the French arresting Durov and making the average Russian soldier aware of this issue when previously they could just skim the cream of unencrypted military conversations off the Telegram servers.
To operate in EU, this kind of platform needs to abide by the DSA, Digital Service Act.
Telegram has a very nice page where it states its approach to DSA compliance.
Did it really do any of the things listed?
It would seem that the major problem was the utter disregard of any report about illegal content - as in hate speech, child exploitation, revenge porn, copyrighted material, etc. - coming either from users or authorities.
Once you are told to remove it, and do not act, you are an accomplice.
Sorry, but not sorry.
Some of the rules might not be completely to my liking, but once they are part of the law, you get to follow them - and both DSA and DMA (Digital Market Act) are starting to show they have some teeth.
This I gather from Italian Matteo Flora’s podcast, usually he’s very well informed due to his long experience in the specific fields (and often hosts subject matter experts as e.g. Guido Scorza, member of Italian Data Protection Agency)
Pavel Durov had around 50 secret visits to Russia between 2015 and 2021.
Following the failure of his cryptocurrency project in the U.S., he got back to Russia - and the Kremlin suddenly decided to stop blocking Telegram, and Durov immediately made a plea to pay off his debts to investors.
Tell that to Apartheid Edison. He was in France recently and ignores that law too. Fired the people who could do the moderating in most European languages.
Wonder has there been a really significant amount of fraud related to Telegram in France recently? I mean much more than on the other social media (who are relentlessly engaged in all the above).
According to TF1, the entrepreneur, who holds French citizenship, may face charges for enabling his messaging app to stream pirated broadcasts of French football matches.
It appears there’s more to it than just prirated football stuff. I quote from the TC article shared by @FGD135
In all, 12 charges have been filed […]
The charges can be broken down into four categories:
Telegram’s founder has been charged with being complicit in storing and distributing CSAM content, facilitating drug trafficking and facilitating organized fraud and other illegal transactions.
The court claims that Telegram refuses to cooperate with law enforcement when they file a formal request for information or documents.
Durov faces several charges related to Telegram’s cryptographic features as they haven’t been formally declared or certified by French authorities. […]
Durov is accused of taking part in a “criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment,” as well as money laundering.
The first charge is most likely because Telegram has open Groups with a maximum of 200.000 members, and they don’t do any moderation on those, so some of them have become the most fucked up places you one imagine.
The last charge is because Telegram has two cryptocurrencies, one for paid features and another one to pay for services provided by other users, and the app has a built-in wallet.
So it’s less a case of this being about football only, and more a case of the headline pushing the thing that they believe will get the most clicks! Good to know that there seems to be some there there…
A few months ago we ran a small experiment. We created a new account in Telegram and started looking for a job. We joined channels that were directly about jobs in Estonia. Here’s what happened.
We were quickly offered to 1) carry migrants from Belarusian border to Germany, 2) to scam Swiss out of their savings, 3) launder money by allowing unknown people use our bank accounts, 4) different drug related gigs, 5) send a photo of our penis for 2500 USD (we rejected).
It was the first thing suggested as a reason but I haven’t heard much about it since.
Pirate streams are on lots of social media…
I was thinking more of crypto/hacking. They tend to have telegram handles when they go looking for cash.
ETA
For those that don’t know: while petrostate sports washing is endemic in football France was a high profile early adopter. They also are heavily involved with beIN spors, a Qatari company. I think. It certainly carried French football abroad quite early. Resists urge to talk about watching Ireland play on a French Arab channel. Resist.
Good to know that there seems to be some there there…
