This weekend, Telegram's CEO and Founder Pavel Durov was arrested when he landed in France. There's a hundred news articles about it if you'd like to learn the specifics.
Here's a story about it from Wired: www.wired.com/story/telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-arrest/
You might be wondering what this story has to do with travel, or Travel Massive.
If you're a member of Travel Massive, you've probably heard of Telegram or use it. It's a chat app similar to WhatsApp, Messenger, LINE (popular in Thailand, Japan), KakaoTalk (Korea), WeChat (China), etc. If you travel to parts of Central Asia, Russia, or Indonesia you'll probably need Telegram to keep in touch with locals you meet.
In terms of community building, Telegram excels at group chat. For example — we've got an Almaty Travel Massive Telegram group that is very active with our community in Kazakhstan. I'm a regular user of Telegram and keep in touch with a few people on it from other countries, thanks to the in-built translation tool.
What concerns me about the arrest of Telegram's CEO is that all these wonderful communication tools we've built to keep in touch with people around the world are at risk. Arresting Pavel Durov won't shut down Telegram, but it gives France (and the EU) a bargaining chip to force them to make changes to the network on their terms.
Although we're much smaller than Telegram, Travel Massive is another wonderful creation of the Internet, and this community only exists because we could freely connect and organise on social platforms like Telegram. If social networks become more restricted, we're only going to become less connected and less informed.
All social networks and forums need moderation (even around here). I get as much spam on Telegram as on Facebook or any other network. In my opinion, Pavel's arrest is not about moderation, but about censorship.
As travelers, we know how valuable international friendships and connections are. A threat to Telegram or any global communications app is a threat to travellers and international tourism businesses staying connected.
Arresting founders of social media companies is not normal, and we shouldn't be going down this path.
Free Pavel!
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Comments
Would say this very much is an issue of content moderation rather than censorship. Telegram is pretty much by definition a bad actor, with complete disdain for moderation, hosting of vile content (CSAM), and one that badly misrepresents its supposed levels of encryption. There’s a good and nuanced discussion below on the issues at play on my favourite podcast dedicated to content moderation (yes I need to get out more). Alex & Evelyn really know their stuff.
pca.st/episode/d4c98a9b-2c80-4475-b503-6b9ca2d4d50c
Listening to the podcast now, super interesting. I still don't agree that arresting Pavel Durov is a good pathway to a better online world.
I completely agree. As Stuart pointed out regarding Telegram's poor reputation, it seems we're approaching a point where those who manage social platforms might be held accountable for the content created by their users. This could inevitably lead to active censorship, which would spell a grim future for Telegram.
Agree.