gerikson

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/

@dgerard@awful.systems pin pls 📌

I don't wanna be a wet blanket but one thing that struck me back in the Last.fm days was how little music taste correlated with how I got along with people (online and off). That said I'll give these a fair shake but I'm an old man set in my ways when it comes to music.

FWIW I usually find what JWZ recommends/promotes to be ok.

I think the prosecution will have a hard time, but I don't know anything about French internet law. But if it's a weird-ass protection deal to keep Durov out of Russia's hands, it might just be smoke and mirrors anyway.

I'm pretty sure that if everything would have been EE2E on Telegram it would never have reached the size and popularity that it has.

Plenty of people are showering unearned privacy brownie points on Telegram already. There's a bizarre Telegram/Signal beef online since forever.

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?

Copying my comment from this lobste.rs submission b/c there's a high risk it will be removed as off-topic

Also LOL jzw: https://mastodon.social/@jwz/113024385254398763

///

I'm confident Durov was arrested because the platform he was responsible for is a hotbed of illegal activity, most of which is not under the cover of encryption. Telegram doesn't seem to have a large trust and safety team (which is a huge cost center when at Telegram's scale) and there's a lot of stuff that might be legal in many other countries but is not in France.

Arresting a business owner is not unknown when the risk of them absconding is high (Durov has dual citizenship and access to a private jet) and there's a high risk of evidence being destroyed. Durov has money and access to the best legal representation money can buy. He will have to cool his heels in Paris for a couple of months before implementing some changes to Telegrams moderation.

Edit I didn't know much about Durov before, so I did some reading.

This is from Le Monde about the arrest[1]:

France's OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offenses including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism [...]

Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform. "Enough of Telegram's impunity," said one of the investigators, adding they were surprised Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.

Why is Durov a French citizen, as well as already being a citizen of the UAE? Turns out that's pretty hinky[2].

I don't think we're talking about a principled defender of free speech and privacy rights here. This is a very rich dude doing very rich dude things and flying too close to the sun.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/08/25/telegram-chief-pavel-durov-arrested-at-french-airport-officials_6721313_7.html

[2] Le Monde article "The Telegram founder's mysterious French passport", archive link: https://archive.is/6sakK

deep freeze the mofos

HN shocked and appalled that a "founder" cannot make billions running a largely unmoderated social network without facing a few consequences:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353

edit @dgerard already posted this on the top level, I just got triggered by one of the many dupe submissions on HN

highlights include

• standard Signal-bashing
• comparison with other heroes like Kim Dotcom (lol) and Snowden
• outrage that the arrest order was issued while Durov was in the air, so he couldn't evade justice (this is unconfirmed)
• outrage that being a citizen of a country allows that country to enforce its laws against someone

Durov is rich and accused in a country governed by the rule of law (in contrast to the other country which has issued him a passport, the UAE). He can afford the very best lawyers and will have to be content with staying in Paris while this works out, boo-hoo.

I've had his number since way back.

Hang around the paleo-geek community enough and people will argue precisely that.

“Sufficiently polite nazis–which you cannot tell apart from normal users–will help a community, but uncivil people–even if good!– will harm it.”

This is literally how you get a Nazi bar.