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Pavel Durov’s Arrest Should Be A Major Warning To Elon Musk
Ignoring responsibility has a price.
Pavel Durov is who Elon Musk wished he was. He is the hard-line, free-speech-absolutist billionaire social media founder of the infamous Russian Telegram messaging app. Telegram famously has zero moderation and complete encryption, giving users total anonymity. As such, it is loved by both political protesters trying to topple dictatorships, and criminal organisations alike. Unlike Durov, who built Telegram from scratch and has an untarnished free speech absolutism track record, Musk had to buy his social media empire, and his free speech track record is far from perfect. Sure, he basically annihilated Twitter’s content moderation team when he took over, removing all accountability on the platform. But he has also repeatedly deplatformed X/Twitter profiles that are critical of him. However, Durov’s recent arrest should be a wake-up call for Musk, as while their approaches are different, Musk could still suffer the same fate as Durov.
So, why was Durov arrested?
Well, it was because of a lack of moderation on Telegram. The French Police considered that the lack of moderation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the app. What criminal activity? Well, we don’t know the details yet, but reports suggest it was around Telegram…
