Who is Pavel Durov — and why is his arrest over Telegram so significant?
Free-speech proponents warn of dangerous precedent
It has been a wild week for Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
The Russian billionaire and social media magnate stepped off a private jet near Paris, arriving from Azerbaijan, last Saturday and was promptly arrested. French police had noticed his name on the passenger list.
Child pornography, drug trafficking, extremist propaganda, organized crime — Druov is not accused of any of these offences.
Instead, prosecutors charged him with 12 offences related to allegations of his messaging app, which is well known for its encryption options, being complicit in allowing users to facilitate such illicit activities — and for refusing to co-operate with law enforcement.
French authorities had been investigating Durov and Telegram for months. But his arrest came as a surprise and, critics say, could serve as a warning to the heads of other tech companies who are seen as being too soft on moderating objectionable content and activity on their platforms.
"I can't think of a prior precedent for this, where something similar has happened to someone in the tech industry in such a significant position of power," British tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker told CBC's Front Burner this week.
Durov is free, for now, after four days of questioning and paying bail equal to nearly $7.5 million Cdn. He's not permitted to leave France, where he also holds citizenship, pending further investigation.
Here's what you need to know about Durov, Telegram and the implications of his arrest.
Who is Pavel Durov?
The 39-year-old, who was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, co-founded Telegram in 2013 with his older brother Nikolai — whom France is also seeking to arrest.
According to Telegram, Pavel supports the app "financially and ideologically while Nikolai's input is technological."
He also co-founded, along with Nikolai, the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte, or VK, and was its CEO from 2006 until 2014, when he sold his stake after pressure from Russian authorities.
Aside from Russia and France, he is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based, and the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.
Durov is somewhat reclusive and rarely gives interviews.
He has his own channel on Telegram where he shares updates about the platform, personal thoughts and photos with more than 11.5 million subscribers. His last post was Aug. 14, marking the app's 11th anniversary.
Why is encryption a big deal?
One of the most popular features among Telegram's 950 million active users is its encryption.
Not all of its features are entirely, or "end-to-end" encrypted. Communication in its group chats and channels can be read by Telegram, said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizenlab.
"Similarly, messages between users are not end-to-end encrypted by default."
But its "secret chat" option is end-to-end encrypted, which prevents Telegram, or anyone apart from the intended recipients, from reading the messages.
WhatsApp, Telegram's bigger rival, offers end-to-end encrypted messaging automatically.
But WhatsApp is owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which has a history of providing user data and communications to law enforcement and government agencies.
Being a large company based in the U.S. raises "suspicion" among some, Stokel-Walker said, that Meta companies would "be willing to give up some of their user data if asked by government."
Why does Telegram have a murky reputation?
Encryption, and with it the ability to avoid law enforcement and government agencies, has attracted some sinister characters to Telegram, from extremist groups to child pornographers.
In a 2016 interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Durov argued that "encryption is either secure or not" and that any exception would endanger the "private communications of hundreds of millions of people."
But it's not just encrypted chats that are a concern.
Telegram also offers group messaging, which can have as many as 200,000 interactive members, and channels that allow users to broadcast announcements to an unlimited number of subscribers.
Western governments have often criticized Telegram for a lack of content moderation.
"When in the past, terrorist organizations were using Telegram, it took quite a while for Telegram to respond to do anything, which earned [Durov] a lot of criticism," journalist Darren Loucaides told CBC Radio's The Current this week.
The company also has a reputation for not co-operating with organizations that work to protect children from online sexual exploitation.
Telegram has increasingly become a source of child sexual abuse material in recent years including "techniques and tactics on exploiting children," according to Stephen Sauer, director of Cybertip.ca, the national tipline of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P).
"We've seen situations where youth are driven to Telegram through luring and sextortion incidents as well," he told CBC News.
And, he says, much of that happens in the open, unencrypted groups and channels. People seeking child pornography are often linked to Telegram from other places on the internet and the dark web.
Sauer says CP3 contacts Telegram weekly about problematic material or users, but unlike other platforms, they do not get a response.
Telegram disputed those allegations in a statement sent to CBC News on Friday. Spokesperson Remi Vaughn said the company "actively combats harmful content" on its platform and that it removed more than 50,000 groups and channels related to child abuse in August.
"Moderators use a combination of proactive monitoring of public parts of the platform, AI tools and user reports to remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day that breach Telegram's terms of service," Vaughn said.
What does this mean for 'free speech' platforms?
Some prominent advocates for internet free speech have come to the defence of Telegram and Durov.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and transformed it into what is now known as X, has been speaking out in support of Durov. The self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" shared a post on X with the hashtag #freePavel following the arrest.
Likewise, noted journalist Glenn Greenwald said on X that holding the head of tech company responsible for activity on their platform is a "dangerous precedent" that could "be used as leverage to make companies censor content at governments' requests."
The uproar centres on both free speech and on the argument over whether executives of such companies are "directly responsible for the consequences of what the users do on them," Stokel-Walker said.
Sauer says the investigation into Telegram is important and should put pressure on other companies to be more actively involved in stopping the spread of harmful material.
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With files from Front Burner, The Current, Reuters and The Associated Press