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August 26, 2024 - 3:20pm
The arrest of Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov in Paris over the weekend has shocked the world. Although charges have yet to be filed, media reports suggest that the warrant was issued for Durov as part of an inquiry into “fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promotion of terrorism and cyberbullying” on the platform. These are extremely serious crimes, and the tech CEO stands accused of knowingly failing to prevent them.
The damage that this could do to France’s image in the eyes of the technology and entrepreneurial communities is profound. Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, raised a counterfactual question, posting online: “The year is 1994 and Vint Cerf and Rob Kahn [sic] have just been arrested. Their invention (TCP/IP) is being used for drug dealers to communicate with each other and they were unwilling to install a back door.”
What Maguire’s tweet suggests is not simply that France is playing fast and loose with free speech, but that the French state’s position on technology is now such that it might bring serious criminal charges against people who develop communication platforms. The takeaway is straightforward enough: the tech community should avoid France and view it as akin to authoritarian countries such as China when considering doing business there.
It seems likely that the United States was made aware of Durov’s arrest before it was announced publicly. It also seems likely that Washington understands how France undermining its image amongst tech entrepreneurs is good for America: French engineers and entrepreneurs now have every incentive to migrate to the United States, where they are protected by the rule of law. Indeed, while the European media was playing up nefarious activity on Telegram, the New York Times was running stories framing the Durov arrest as part of the debate around freedom of speech. The Americans are preparing the ground to become a bastion of business freedom as Europe sinks into the sea.
Europe is already destroying its international competitiveness in its manufacturing sector through sanctions and counter-sanctions on Russian energy. Now, it seems, securocrats in the European bureaucracies want to turn the continent into a place where technologists fear the creation of platforms that allow for communications. They will no doubt soon move to ban Telegram and greatly restrict access to Twitter/X. Those who want to thrive outside of such a stifling environment will leave, and the cream of European entrepreneurship may soon cross the Atlantic.
Near the start of his presidency, Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to make France a “startup nation”. What happened to this optimism? Like much in Europe, it has collapsed into paranoia in the wake of the Ukraine War. In June, the Ukrainian media claimed that Russian intelligence agents were using Telegram and Tiktok to recruit saboteurs in Europe, just one among a litany of stories that accuse Telegram of undermining security on the continent. We do not yet know for certain if these reports fed into the decisions of French lawmakers to arrest Durov, but it seems likely they did.
There is always a trade-off between freedom and security. For the same reason, there is often a trade-off between entrepreneurship and security. That France has decided to prioritise security over freedom and entrepreneurship bodes very badly for the future of Europe. Creative minds will now look across the Atlantic for opportunity — and America will welcome them with open arms. In this regard, the United States appears to have snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat in Ukraine. Europe, meanwhile, has tied itself to the mast of a sinking ship.
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SubscribeI have enjoyed Pinkington’s contributions on various issues before, but this is one of his best.
To reframe his core point, lest it go underappreciated: the defence of freedom (of speech, of association, from the tyranny of government) is not just a matter of principle, it is also a question of economic good practice.
That is because when left free to pursue their own ends, economic actors stumble upon ways of doing things that benefit not only themselves, but society as a whole. This processes and ideas rarely comes from the state, which is dominated by bureaucracy, hierarchy and lacks creative incentives.
Nothing speaks to how true this is more than France’s relationship with new technology: Minitel was a failure because the French tried to create it as a closed, top-down system. The internet was a success because it was a bottom-up, open system.
I agree government should generally stay out the way. The major exception to this is for nation-sized concerns, which are just too big to cope with private investment alone and also need to be subject to government restraint. Classic cases include nuclear power, spinoffs from defence developments and pharmaceuticals. In EU, of course, such considerations are unimportant as the only essential is EU control of everything! No doubt UK will move even further down its own rabbit hole of mediocrity under the new government.
If the price of ‘excellence’ is perpetual servitude, we’ll take mediocrity any day. The Russians and Chinese are said to be mediocre, but they enjoy better opportunities than we do.
Moron.
Better opportunities to do what?
End up dead or in a Gulag if you are lucky.
As sad as this is for many Europeans, if these sorts of arrests lead to a newfound zeal toward the 1st Amendment here in the states, then maybe that is a price that needs to be paid. When these policies wind up descending into madness (if they haven’t already), the USA can re-establish itself as a safehaven for freedom of speech.
They also stumble on ways of doing things that benefit jihadiis, sextortionists, and paedophiles, not to mention socially useful drugs like oxycontin. You may think that the benefits outweigh the costs, but should you not at least consider both sides of the ledger?
It is possible and essential to address both sides of the ledger but it doesn’t involve arresting the CEO of the company on (if what Pilkington says is true) ludicrous grounds.
Governments have caused more harm than every criminal ever born.
I’m not exactly bullish on free speech here in America, either. Kamala Harris’ running mate has stated (incorrectly) that “the First Amendment doesn’t protect hate speech or misinformation.”
This of course ignores the question of what hate speech truly is, or what misinformation truly is.
The Biden administration embedded security and intelligence personnel at Twitter 1.0, as we now know, and likely has them at every social media company, where they censor anything that disrupts their narratives.
Censors are always shameless propagandists.
I’d go a step further and suggest that the whole ridiculous concept of “hate speech” is incompatible with the First Amendment.
You Americans are doing a lot better than us on defending free speech right now (and almost always have done). I’d happily swap all our UK human rights and equalities legislation (everything introduced over the last 30 years to be precise) for a First Amendment here in the UK.
You could always move to the US.
Or you to North Korea.
I’m happy living in Australia, but thanks anyway.
Could you suggest a country to move to where there is no government, but only criminals? If I understand you right that should be an extremely desirable place to live.
Pretty much everything which has been discovered/invented since the dawn of time has had the potential for negative purposes. Isn’t that exactly what the “apple of knowledge” and hence the expulsion from the Garden of Eden is analogous to.
We all know you are just little Stalin going by your covid views.
Why don’t you move to Russia or China to experience other side of the ledger.
I think many here would agree that France’s actions go way too far, however, some regulation is often necessary in the end. Perhaps under “perfect liberty”, as Adam phrased it, an economy/society will just regulate itself towards some optimized goal. But he also knew it could never exist. It is not as if big capital is not full of counterproductive bureaucracies. That said, it is a bit sad that the free anarchist/libertarian spirit of the internet is mostly gone now. But that too is not just because of government. Big financial interests integrated into the algorithms of the web 2.0 ad revenue architecture have not exactly made the internet more free and creative either.
You’re right that the internet has changed, but I don’t think it’s because of the ads. Myself, though I spend way too much time on sites like UnHerd, I find that books are again my main reading material. Blogs, substacks and even online news have become too superficial. We all want to write and few want to read our not well-thought-out thoughts.
Books help. They provide more curated insights, giving meat and potatoes to digest instead of the sugar rush of cotton candy. So I’ve been writing a book for a couple of years now, and have finally made some real progress. Maybe that’s why my opinion has changed.
Well, I don’t mean ads per se but the entire ad and user data infrastructure where internet users are now coerced around a few huge websites with big financial/political interest behind them. Of course, the old internet is not entirely gone.
Furthermore, reading books is always good, more people should do it. This would make people much more conscious about how things work than listening to a few YouTubers. Many of the thinkers that are routinely discussed, either in a positive or negative light, are rarely actually read and investigated. Anyway, good luck on your book!
You need to find a publisher to print a book. It is often said (I have no personal experience) that publishing is very “woke”/ PC/ whatever, which is one reason why publishing your own content online has blossomed.
For some purposes it’s possible to stick to reading older books, but that is no answer to discussion about current events.
It’s not government that threatens basic freedoms but economic ‘good practice.’ Look where it’s led already.
Well im sure they would only see the further destruction of the economy as a positive thing given their destructive policies regarding green energy and immigration. Nothing they do tells me they want a vibrant , dynamic economy
Doesn’t the US currently have the same policies on green energy and immigration (namely lots of both)? Won’t those policies continue when Harris is in the White House?
I would respectfully disagree. Europe goes down but this has nothing to do with it. Durov wanted to play with big boys by his own rules ( see Tucker’s interview ). Without powerful backers he’ll be eaten alive. Nothing particularly new or surprising here. But he had a good run for a guy who thinks he’s just doing a tech business.
Difficult to feel sorry for him. He is Russian, after all.
Surely a new low in comments on Unherd.
I hanker for the days (not that long ago) when the US Right could be guaranteed to hate Russians.
There are entrepreneurs in Europe? Who knew?
They need to leave where they are not wanted, and come to where they are wanted.
Some good points here, but I don’t think government officials in Washington DC failed to object to this arrest because they feel it will be to our benefit in attracting French entrepreneurs. They aren’t that farseeing.
Indeed, many if not most of them probably applaud France’s action and would like to see the same thing done here. Same with Thierry Breton’s threatening letter to Elon Musk about hosting the interview of Donald Trump.
True, and the way the US is using lawfare doesn’t say much for the rule of law there.
If Durov is guilty of the things he has been accused of, it is only right that he should be arrested. Tech entrepreneurs might think they are above the law, but they are not. As to the comment about sanctioning Russian energy, that is of course because Russia goes about launching unprovoked invasions of other countries.
If I buy a megaphone, and use it too loudly whip up crowds into lynch mobs, should the CEO of the corporation that produced the megaphone be held liable?
No, because the company that produced the megaphone doesn’t have direct day-to-day control over the megaphone.
Should the CEO of an encrypted telephone service be arrested because people are using the service for nefarious purposes?
Not if they don’t have direct day to day control over the messaging.
So the CEO and Chairman of a water company which has repeatedly dumpef raw sewage, illegally into rivers and coastal waters, can argue that they weren’t involved in day to day operations and therefore can’t be held responsible for the actions of the company?
Banks being targeted because people who they lend money to do things which some other people disagree with.
I’d say two different scenarios.
No, of course not. The CEO is deemed to be responsible for the actions of the company. My personal view is that more CEOs should be jailed for this sort of thing.
Spoken like a true German…
Thank you. I am in fact half-German.
Charges apparently include 12 counts of helping facilitate child abuse/pornography and withholding information from investigating Authorities.
There is a limit to how much tech entrepreneurs can be absolved.
I think the withholding information bit is the thing that takes them over the edge. Active enablement,
If the head of the company can be prosecuted for these crimes (rather than those further down the management and “coal face” employees) on the basis that they are ultimately responsible and liable for everything in respect to the company they are the ultimate representative of (something I don’t necessarily disagree with – I’m a non exec of a very small start-up and I accept that the role carries risks and responsibilities, both reputational and financial, from my failure to to apply and document full due diligence to the the best of my endeavours to the company and those involved in it) then surely Starmer (as a single example) should be held responsible in a court of law for Rochdale and associated crimes which were ignored as he was the ultimate person responsible for the whole department of justice.
I was not aware is not a defence when it’s your ultimate role to be aware.
I don’t think France realises the problems it has created. However, even if the French authorities do understand them they might just shrug their shoulders with a little ‘Pouf’ of insouciance – c’est la loi.
To the rest of the world there are a nest of problems. The first is that Telegram is one of the big messaging services – that makes it look like a free speech issue, but this isn’t quite as simple as it first appears.
Social media and messaging platforms (eg Vodafone) will turn over content and meta-data if compelled to do so by judicial order. Meta data from J6 was used to identify people at the Capitol for instance. Social media companies do have to comply with local laws, or they have to not operate in that country (eg Twitter in Brazil). Telegram, as a company has to comply or close in France. There are though limits – eg journalist and whistleblower protections, and noble causes such as the protection of dissidents, so social media companies also have a role to protect the privacy of their users from potentially abusive government intrusion. That is the arguments need to be played out in open in a court of law and public opinion – protecting child abusers is bad, protecting anti-Putin Russians is good. Case details and due process matter.
The bigger issue here is that the CEO has been arrested, instead of prosecuting the company. That seems to over-personalise a corporate dispute which should play out between the company and the authorities through the courts – Telegram isn’t The Silk Road which was created deliberately to facilitate illegal transactions. It also seems to make a CEO liable for the messages on his/her platform. By analogy, it makes Satya Nadella, head of Microsoft, personally liable for what Microsoft users put on One-Drive. A lot of US companies are being bashed by courts in Europe, but no-one would think of taking the the CEO of Uber, or Google into custody if their plane ever landed in Paris.
The speech issues still remain in balance. Europe says large platforms should moderate content on their systems which remains a minefield of picking through what is and isn’t true, what rumours are allowed or not allowed, and what is criminal versus not criminal (not least because governments themselves aren’t good at this stuff). Does this mean that cloud storage providers, like Microsoft or Google, have a duty to scan all their corporate clients just in case there is evidence of backhanders to politicians, or fixing of diesel emission tests or equivalent? It seems that turning corporations into policemen – eg banks with Know-Your-Customer requirements – is wrong. Not least because a corporation as a policeman creates huge conflicts of interest, and huge temptations for corruption, and use of government power to silence critics through third parties. Our historical lesson is that more speech is better than controlled speech, even though it will be painful at times.
The arrest of the CEO is blatant political intimidation and negates any arguments that there might be about Telegram, of which I had never heard until last week. The failure of the French State to use its institutional memory to deal with the company (the knowledge and memory that every so-called democratic state has) is a clear signal that while free speech remains in the balance in Europe, European Governments and EU institutions are targeting it.
The CEO was idiot enough to land his plane in France, so he deserves what he gets.
You don’t like Pavel Durov? I thought you would. He left Russia in 2014 because he was being pressured to ban opposition parties from using his platform, and he continues to oppose Vladimir Putin. He has become a dual citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates, and given up his Russian citizenship. He did not know there was a warrant for his arrest in France when he went there, which he often does.
With a $15 billion fortune and these sketchy charges, I doubt Pavel Durov’s going to suffer much. He did spend a couple of days in jail before he got bailed out. But he wasn’t arrested to be tried for a crime. He was arrested so they could launch a formal investigation. It’s early days yet, but I’m willing to bet that he is not even tried let alone convicted. This arrest was just a publicity stunt.
I don’t know much about Durov, apart from the fact that he is Russian (admittedly a bad start), and that he is a bit “looksmaxxed”. I do find it weird that not that long ago, he could have been described as “bald”, but I guess he can afford a hair transplant, and its his money. If he is found not guilty, he can of course walk, but I think his arrest sends a message to others who think they are above the law. I assume he understands the health consequences of continuing to oppose Vladimir Putin.
French government thinks it’s almost too late to stop ‘communications entrepreneurs’ taking over. They’re already running riot, so to speak. Maybe ‘international competitiveness’ is something one needs to avoid like the plague, whatever the supposed ‘costs.’
Anyone confident that the US will be more favorable to entrepreneurial innovation in the social media and communication space has not been paying attention.
Free Ross Ulbricht……