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Pavel Durov arrested in France over allowing untrammelled unmoderated criminality on Telegram (www.reuters.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

That was Durov's biggest mistake in retrospect. Man should've taken some lessons from Megaupload's demise and gone all the way on E2E - would've given him plenty of plausible deniability if he genuinely couldn't have known what any of his users were doing.

It would've arguably brought other problems, but it would've removed that golden opportunity for the gendarmes to nail him.

Would've likely also earned Durov some brownie points with privacy nuts, as well.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

i have no idea why people say that telegram is private and secure and whatever, it's just whatsapp/twitter hybrid for former soviet union people

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

and furries, for some reason

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

And Finnish university students.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Granted. I was mainly thinking from the angle of "how to I keep the prosecution from having a slam-dunk case against Durov" here.

Also, it seems my expectations from privacy nuts were a bit higher than I expected.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] teolan 7 points 3 months ago

French law has somewhat strict laws on how quickly you need to react (take it down, and keep all logs/account info for law enforcement) if law enforcement tells you some account is used for terrorism/pedo stuff. Pretty sure Telegram simply never complied with these laws.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I don’t know anything about French internet law.

Same here, I'll admit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

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.

I don't know what you're saying here because it makes no sense. No one who uses or shills for Telegram thinks lack of EE2E is a good thing, absolutely no one. They use it despite of lack of EE2E (ignorance or ideologically-flavored ignorance).