Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was detained at an airport near Paris. It has repercussions all over. Some called it an assault on free speech and innovation.
There are nuances here. Telegram has been ultra-lax about the content oversight. There are allegations of child sexual abuse (CSAM) material on the platform. Other social media platforms spend considerable time and resources to ban such material. There are alleged drug trafficking and money laundering issues.
Telegram is a powerful platform with 900 million monthly users. There is no overseeing worth the name. It has minimum intervention policy (resulting into low operational costs). Undesirable groups may be using the platform not for its secrecy but for its ‘anything goes’ approach.
Telegram calls it absurd that the owner of the platform is held responsible for the abuse of the platform. It says it abides by the EU laws, including the Digital Services Act. Many others do not see any absurdity if someone is held accountable for criminal activity. Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted. Most chats on the app use client-server encryption. If it chooses, Telegram can access message contents. Much of the content is on public channels. Telegram’s ‘secret chat’ feature is end-to-end encrypted. It is not active by default. It is not used for regular communication. Telegram does not offer real privacy, but only creates an illusion of it. It has technical means to monitor content. It chooses not to use this capability.
Telegram has allowed a free rein to all kinds of activities on its platform and is not immune to its consequences. Digital world is too subject to regulation, just as the physical world is. There cannot be a regulatory vacuum for social media platforms. Europe and Britain are on the right track by either enacting or proposing to enact regulatory laws.
Telegram CEO Druv has been charged with multiple criminal offences. Though it is unusual to target executives for crimes committed on their platforms, Paris prosecutor noted the platform’s ‘near complete’ lack of response to legal requests for cooperation. The 39-year-old CEO posted bail of 5 million Euros after being questioned by a judge on 28th August 2024 and following four days of police custody.
The founder-CEO has acquired multiple citizenships. Druv has dual citizenship of Russia as well as France. His arrest has upset Russia. France treats his as a part of investigation, and not as a political move. When Telegram was run as a free speech absolutist, these passports protected him. Once he wrote in Instagram, ‘To be really free, you could be ready to risk everything.’ That risk appears to have caught him up (despite the passports from Russia, France, UAE, Saint Kitts and Nevis.)
The French charges are against the platform, and not against Durov personally. It serves as a warning to other Big Tech companies. So far social media enjoyed protection across jurisdictions called safe hurbour. Its basic premise is that platforms cannot control the posts on their site. They should not be held legally liable for any objectionable content they host. The only condition is that they should be ready to take such content down when flagged by the government or various courts. Safe harbour is viewed as a basic text of allowing freedom of expression. In the US, this special protection is available to social media under Section 230 of the US Communication Decency Act on par with Section 79 of India’s IT Act, 2000 which classifies social media as intermediaries, and shields them from legal action.
In India, certain officials of social media can be sued if their platforms violate the norms. Under the Rules of the IT Act, 2021, social media companies with more than 5 million Indian users have to appoint a chief compliance officer who could be held criminally liable if the platforms do not adhere to the government’s take down requests or violate other norms. However, the government has not exercised this power so far.
The IT Act will be followed by the Digital India Bill. The government is expected to consider whether safe harbours should be available to the social media.