🧨 A telegram about Telegram
PAVEL DUROV TELEGRAM FOUNDER ARRESTED PARIS - STOP -
TECHBROS DECRY AUTHORITARIAN OVERREACH - STOP -
OSINT ANALYSTS IDENTIFY PANIC AMONG RUSSIAN MILITARY - STOP -
CLASH BETWEEN BORDERLESS INTERNET IDEAL AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY EXPOSED - STOP -
DUROV AS CENTRAL GATEKEEPER CHALLENGES END-TO-END IDEAL - STOP -
END TELEGRAM
Pavel Durov, the boss and owner of the messenger Telegram, was arrested in Paris earlier this week. Here’s what I make of it.
Tribalism is everywhere
The arrest sparked a wide spectrum of reactions.
Silicon Valley libertarians decried it as a techno-authoritarian coup. At the same time, OSINT and geopolitical analysts highlighted the panic amongst Russia’s military which depends on Telegram for communication, even on the battlefield.
Others criticed Telegram’s poor track record in tackling child sexual abuse material1, large-scale criminal activity and financial misdemeanours. These varied responses underscore the deep tribalism in political and technological circles, with different groups interpreting the event through their pre-existing frameworks.
Cyberspace meets realpolitik
The protocols that underpin the Internet don’t naturally understand national borders. As the notion of cyberspace emerged, it was seen as a different domain, a stateless system which transcended national boundaries. By the mid-1990s, “it undermined the most basic building block of the geopolitical order: territorial sovereignty, the notion that a nation controls what goes on at its borders.”2
Nation-states have been biting back. They are increasingly at odds with these ideals and using their legitimate law-making powers to ensure cyberspace complies. It’s not easy. A Brazilian supreme court judge has banned Elon Musk’s X for violating Brazilian law.
In some sense, Durov is a man from the future.