Turns out the story is even weirder, Durov wasn’t always a ‘everything is allowed’ free speech guy. Iran must be defended
Wild-ass theory: Putin convinced Durov to travel to France to get himself arrested to rile up millions of Telegram users and make France look foolish/despotic.
I’m seeing some chatter from leftist meme pages (THE most reliable source of news on the internet /s) linking this to a leak of israeli data on telegram less than a week ago. Probably just a conspiracy theory, but thought it was relevant.
Everything is terrible
Conservatives in particular have, for culture war reasons, recently recommended Telegram—an “encrypted messaging” app that has many parts that are not encrypted and which does not have a clear governance structure—over Signal, an app that is open source and by all accounts uses one of the strongest encryption protocols ever created, on every chat that happens on the platform. Because conservatives have promoted Telegram recently, some of them now see Durov’s arrest as a particular crackdown on America’s right wing, free speech, and, possibly, a political incursion against the Russian government and military, both of which use Telegram.
https://www.404media.co/how-telegrams-founder-pavel-durov-became-a-culture-war-martyr/
Conservatives in particular have, for culture war reasons, recently recommended Telegram—an “encrypted messaging” app that has many parts that are not encrypted and which does not have a clear governance structure—over Signal, an app that is open source and by all accounts uses one of the strongest encryption protocols ever created, on every chat that happens on the platform.
Refusing to keep your shit secret to own the libs
The plot thickens!
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1827622301363232885.html
Maybe Durov felt safer in French custody than possibly being extraordinarily renditioned to Russia from the UAE?
that does not make any sense
EDIT: to elaborate. if he was in danger in the UAE, he could just go somewhere that isn’t france. the thread speculates he got arrested to ‘signal’ he’s down with the west, which is typical conspiracy baking.
also nothing in the thread indicates why durov would feel threatened by Russia. if anything, it suggests the opposite. also what is “Ukrainian sources”
also nothing in the thread indicates why durov would feel threatened by Russia.
I think russia was debating banning telegram recently, because encryption allows for opposition, but kept it because of its military value.
If your platform was almost banned by a dictatorship I see why you wouldn’t feel comfortable there.