The boss of social media platform Telegram has been arrested in France, accused of allowing the sharing of illegal content.
The Russian-founded messaging platform has remained out of focus in the West but has hundreds of millions of users worldwide and is playing a key role in the Ukraine war.
Libertarian leanings
Pavel Durov, who was arrested after disembarking from his private jet in Paris on Saturday, founded the platform in 2013 with his brother Nikolai.
It claims to have 950 million users – up from 550 million in 2022.
Durov told right-wing American journalist Tucker Carlson in April that users loved the platform’s “privacy and freedom.”
Telegram has done a brilliant job of refusing to hand over or sell user data, setting it apart from the business model of US rivals such as Meta or Google.
Some news channels in Russia and Ukraine are even more popular than traditional media.
But the platform has long been criticised for failing to police extremist content.
Durov, who has a net worth of $15.5 billion, according to Forbes, told the Financial Times in March that he plans to improve moderation mechanisms.
But, he added, “As long as they don’t cross a red line, I don’t think we should police people’s way of expressing themselves.”
However, he also said the company only employs a few dozen people, which experts say may not be enough to provide a reasonably secure platform.
Russian origin
The 39-year-old gained fame in 2006 when he launched the social network VKontakte (VK) shortly after graduating from St Petersburg State University.
Millions of people joined and it soon became known as “Russia’s Facebook”, its popularity also piqued the Kremlin’s interest.
He said he faced demands from Russian security services to hand over details of opposition groups organising using VK.
He later came under heavy pressure to hand over personal data of pro-European activists in Ukraine.
These experiences led him to found Telegram and eventually sell his stake in VK and leave Russia in 2014.
By 2017, they had set up their office in Dubai, keeping a distance from the strict regulatory regimes in the European Union and the United States.
Durov holds citizenship of the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as French nationality, which he acquired in 2021.
Legal troubles
French prosecutors have accused Telegram of failing to moderate content or cooperate with authorities.
They have exposed content related to fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, glorification of terrorism and cyber bullying.
The company has said it can’t be held responsible for what its users do — a defense that big tech platforms have long used.
Several countries have tried to block Telegram in the past.
In 2018, Iran accused it of harboring violent opposition groups.
That same year Russia said it had failed to hand over encryption keys.
Last year, Brazil briefly blocked it for failing to provide data on neo-Nazi groups and Spain took action over intellectual property infringement.
no benefit yet
Telegram was fully funded by Durov until 2018, when it raised $1.7 billion to launch its own cryptocurrency.
The crypto project collapsed after US regulators refused to approve it, and the company reimbursed most of the investment.
The messaging service began running ads in 2021, but stressed it would not use users’ private data for targeting.
Premium membership system will be implemented in 2022.
Durov told the Financial Times that his company is generating billions in revenue and he hopes to become profitable soon.
He also did not rule out the possibility of listing on the stock exchange.
Although he has repeatedly said that his mission is not to become rich.
“For me everything in life was about being free,” he told Carlson, adding that Telegram was about allowing others to express their freedom.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
