What does the arrest of Pavel Durov mean for his technological legacy?

The 39-year-old entrepreneur founded two tech platforms: one became Russia’s answer to Facebook, the opposite a competitor to WhatsApp. No wonder he is named Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg.

His net value is estimated at around $15.5 billion. ForbesThe messaging app Telegram, which he founded, is alleged to value over 30 billion US dollars and is considering an IPO.

But Durov’s status as a technology leader is now in query. On Saturday, he was arrested in Paris in reference to an investigation into alleged use of Telegram as a platform for criminal activity.

The world knows little about Durov, except for glimpses of his life on social media, where he is usually wearing black and pictured against picturesque landscapes. But when Durov makes a rare media appearance, he often sparks interest. In April, for instance, he spoke to far-right talk show host Tucker Carlson about his views on social media platforms, and in July he said he had fathered over 100 children through sperm donation.

His arrest by French authorities sparked reactions from people like Elon Musk and sparked a broader discussion about issues that concern the tech world, akin to freedom of expression and content moderation.

From the Soviet Union to Europe and beyond

Durov was born in Russia, where he and his family lived until he was 4 years old. Then they moved to Italy, where Durov needed to adapt to a special language and culture. In an interview he said said Carlson that his teachers told him he was doomed to failure, which strengthened his competitive spirit and led him to change into a wonderful student.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Durov and his family eventually returned to Russia, where he accomplished his education and founded VKontakte (now “VK”), a Facebook-like platform, in 2006. It proved to be an enormous success and quickly became the biggest social network within the country.

Eventually, nonetheless, the Kremlin began to interfere in the corporate’s management and demanded more control over the platform, prompting Durov to depart VK and Russia in 2014.

A yr before his escape, Durov, along together with his brother Nikolai, arrange Telegram and made it an uncensored and simply accessible application for everybody.

After years of traveling across Europe and Asia, the messaging platform and Durov himself are actually each based in Dubai. He also holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates, France and the Caribbean country of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Telegram has built a status that could be good or bad, depending on who you ask. With a comparatively lean team of fifty or so full time Employees, the app has proven to be a very important communication tool throughout the Russia-Ukraine war. It offers features which its competitors don’t; for instance, its groups can accommodate as much as 200,000 people, while WhatsApp only has 1,000 members. It also offers encryption, allows using cryptocurrency, and offers premium subscriptions.

However, some areas of Telegram have come under fire for allegedly facilitating criminal activities starting from child pornography to terrorism to misinformation. The platform has taken a comparatively lax approach to content moderation, which is probably going why illegal content is more prevalent on Telegram.

“Because of the large proportion of activity on #Telegram that is not and never has been end-to-end encrypted, Pavel’s detention is obviously alarming, as many Telegram users are concerned about the confidentiality of their past statements and who might access them,” said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher on the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. wrote in a post on X.

Recently, other countries have identified these threats: On Tuesday, South Korea an investigation into sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of girls spread through Telegram chats. Brazil temporarily banned Telegram for refusing to share details about neo-Nazi groups with the country’s police authorities last yr. UNESCO highlighted during an investigation in 2022 that about half of the Holocaust-related posts on Telegram either denied or distorted the facts.

Durov told The Financial Times Earlier this yr, Telegram announced it might step up its moderation efforts using AI, but had no intention of monitoring people “unless they cross red lines.” Following the arrest of its boss, Telegram said his moderation is “within industry standards and is constantly improving.”

What does Durov’s arrest mean for social media firms?

Telegram has largely been capable of defend itself against accusations of facilitating illegal activities on its platform. Despite all this, Durov has stressed that he is worried about protecting free expression on the messaging platform.

“Privacy is ultimately more important than our fear of bad events like terrorism,” he wrote in 2015, in accordance with The New York Times.

Meta has been embroiled in its own dispute over free speech, censorship and content moderation for years. Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” whose platform X is Control by the EU regarding content moderation, rushed to Durov’s aid after his arrest.

#FreePavel
pic.twitter.com/B7AcJWswMs

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 25 August 2024

It’s a fragile balance, but arresting the CEOs of tech platforms might not be the very best solution, said Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project on the Washington, DC-based Center for Democracy & Technology The WashingtonPost.

“Arresting platform executives for their alleged failure to adequately moderate content – even content as disturbing and harmful as content that harms children – takes us down a dangerous path that threatens free speech and gives the government too much power to suppress expression,” she said.

Telegram has nearly a billion users worldwide, and while it’s unclear whether Durov’s arrest could change how the app works, it actually increases the risks of moderating content shared on the platform by permissive, malicious actors.