The arrest of Pavel Durov reopens the debate on gender violence on Telegram

The arrest of Pavel Durov reopens the topic of the role between Telegram and gender violence.We talk about it with Silvia Semenzin, an expert researcher in online gender violence.

Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging app Telegram, he was arrested on Monday 26 August at Le Bourget airport, France, as part of an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on the platform.The Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau issued the statement a statement in which the reason for Durov's arrest, which occurred within the context of an investigation against unknown persons initiated by the office's cybercrime unit on July 8.

The investigation concerns the suspected complicity in various crimes, including operating an online platform that enables illicit transactions, child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud, as well as refusing to disclose information to authorities, money laundering and providing encryption services to criminals.

The arrest of the entrepreneur of Russian origin, with French and Emirati citizenship, It immediately provoked various reactions, in particular for many it is a attack on freedom of expression and politically motivated action.The French president Emmanuel Macron, to calm things down, published a statement on X, denying the accusations and reiterating France's role in protecting freedom of expression.

Who is Pavel Durov

Durov was born in 1984 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.His family moved to Italy when he was 4, only to return to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when his father received an offer to head a department at St. Petersburg State University.According to Forbes, the fortune was estimated at $15.5 billion.

He was nicknamed the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg” after the success of his social media VKontakte, or VK – which was the Russian answer to Facebook – founded in 2006, and since the creation of the Telegram messaging app in 2013 together with his brother. In 2014 was forced to leave Russia when you are refused to close opposition accounts in 2011 and to hand over the personal data of Ukrainian pro-democracy protesters in 2014, during the Donbass war, and to block the profile of Alexey Navalny. He then settled in Dubai for the ease of doing business, which he described in an interview as a “neutral place” from a geopolitical point of view.

The Kremlin has started blocking Telegram in 2018 after the company refused to comply with a Russian court's order to grant state security services access to its users' encrypted messages.The action had little effect on the availability of Telegram in that country, but it has unleashed mass protests in Moscow and criticism from various NGOs.

The growing popularity of Telegram, however, has sparked lattention of several European countries, including the Spain and France, due to security issues and data breaches.In May, European regulators began talks with the company to check its compliance with the Digital service act (DSA), but just a few days ago the Belgian authorities they stated that the platform cannot be subject to European legislation because its number of users does not yet exceed 45 million monthly users.For this reason, Telegram can circumvent all the prohibitions imposed by the rules package digital of the European Union.

The right in defense of Durov

The right came to Durov's defense immediately international, which is using the case to its advantage by accusing Paris of violating freedom of expression.Among the most famous and right-wing business figures who have expressed their views on the topic, he stands out Elon Musk, the owner of X who, on his social network, accuses Europe of arresting people for memes and launched the hashtag #freepavel.

Musk is exploiting the case because in December the European Commission has opened an investigation to verify the compliance of to the DSA, in particular regarding content moderation, the spread of fake news and terrorist material. In July the first results of the investigation have arrived confirm the violation of the law regarding the lack of transparency in the use of blue ticks.

Also Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News journalist and close to former US President Donald Trump, who interviewed Durov in July, tweeted attacking Europe, described as worse than Putin.Also interesting Russian position, which, through his national news agency, called Durov the new one Julian Assange.

Telegram and the black hole of gender violence

While Durov's messaging app is used by activists to share content that would otherwise be lost, there is a huge black hole such as the use of Telegram groups in which it is perpetrated gender violence of every kind.From 2019 onwards they have been published various investigations on the exchanges, often violent and disturbing, that can be found in these groups.

Del link between Telegram and gender violence let's talk about it with Silvia Semenzin, post-doc researcher in Digital Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and expert in online gender violence.

Durov's arrest is the first real case of prosecuting a CEO of a digital platform.What do you think?
It is certainly a historical fact from the point of view of what it symbolizes, on a personal level I don't rejoice when a single person is punished in the face of a system that doesn't work.Having worked in the Telegram environment for years and knowing that it is perhaps the platform where there is the least regulation and control of all the illicit phenomena circulating on the platform, I observe the evolution of the situation with great attention.

We are talking about a multi-millionaire entrepreneur who over the years has always refused to provide the authorities with data relating to what is illegal circulating on his platform.Durov, coming from the hacker world, has always disguised himself behind the theme of independence, privacy and freedom of expression to refuse to provide data even to combat certain phenomena, if not for terrorism and child pornography.As far as online scams, neo-fascist groups or gender violence are concerned, there has always been a wall.Even on the topic of encryption, it emerged that it is not true that Telegram is as secure as the company has always claimed.

This arrest certainly has an impact from a symbolic point of view, especially in the European Union, where various measures are being taken following the entry into force of the Digital Service Act and the Digital Market Act, with which the Union seeks to limit the power of Big Tech and these gigantic platforms which, until now, have been a bit of a no-man's land.

In recent years you have worked a lot on the topic of combating online gender violence and Telegram is certainly one of the most used tools to commit this crime.Could this be the right means to combat online gender violence or is there a risk that Durov could pay for others?
With online gender violence we enter the hottest topic, which is that platforms are not neutral.They always arise from a system, a political ideology, a vision of the world for which there are some dimensions in which it is accepted to collaborate with the authorities, such as terrorism, and there are phenomena for which there is absolutely no interest in working together to at least to limit violent actions which are very often suggested by the platform itself.Online gender violence is one of these dimensions.

Durov and Telegram never bothered to undermine this phenomenon and never wanted to include content moderators.I believe that the arrest in itself will not determine anything regarding the fight against online gender violence, what it may determine is the passage in the regulation of a platform like Telegram which at this moment is not obliged to adapt to any rules in force.To date it has not been included in the list of DSA VLOPS - very large online platforms - because it always has fewer than 850 million users.This step, beyond prosecuting Durov, I hope sheds light on the social problems that are then created through a platform like this.

The serious thing is that no solution or collaboration has ever been sought with the authorities, the associations that support the victims and the victims themselves, and that nowadays, despite the numerous scandals that have broken out around Telegram, the situation is always the same or it even gets worse with new functions, such as bots that create deep fake porn for free.This can only be a first step for a change that must be political and socio-cultural with respect to gender violence, as well as being a signal towards the excessive power of those who hold these platforms who, until now, lived in impunity.

There are those who are currently comparing Pavel Durov to Julian Assange.Can we really compare the two cases? Absolutely not, Durov is not the new Assange.We are not talking about censorship in this case, we are not talking about prosecuting a citizen for having spread sensitive political content of public interest, but we are talking about prosecuting an entrepreneur who has enriched himself on the backs of many victims and thanks to profoundly illegal and violent phenomena .In this case, we are talking about a CEO who, as in several cases, when the company makes a mistake is responsible for that mistake.

We talk about content moderation, about limiting and regulating online language which must respect other rights, such as non-discrimination or the right to non-violence.Free speech does not mean that there are no limits and rules, this is the flag of the far right and it is no coincidence that the hashtag was tweeted first of all by Elon Musk who, perhaps, knows that he could get fines from Europe, which is trying to regulate, albeit slowly, the online space taking into account all human rights, which at the moment are not respected.

The activists who deal with the issue have been clamoring for years for measures to be taken in this regard.Unfortunately, the world of the right is very close to a part of the crypto world that wants an untouchable Internet, but we have seen what not having any online rules has led to.My position is that regulation is expected and I hope that, from now on, Telegram will begin to participate, at the very least, in conversations with international institutions regarding content moderation.