Bitcoin Forum

It's all over the news, his names Pavel Durov

Just came back here to tell y'all to be careful if you use telegram who knows what the feds will do

It is true that Telegram owner has been arrested https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-allegedly-arrested-in-france


France has been the country people should not travel to. You can see how they seize Nigeria presidential plane and two other planes or so belonging to Nigeria recently. Also now arrested Telegram CEO.

I just read an article and it said that he was arrested for not censoring contents on his apps - does that relates to speech or illegal dealings?

https://talkimg.com/images/2024/08/24/706KP.jpeg
Image source (https://www.timesnownews.com/world/telegram-founder-pavel-durov-arrested-in-france-andrew-tate-reveals-article-112770168/amp)


People like us who just use telegram to join channels to get information  won’t be too bothered about news like this.  ;D

Even when he bends the knee for western governments and refuses to co-operate with the Russian government they still come after him. This is like the arrests of the Samourai and Tornado Cash developers. Durov is obviously not a terrorist or a money launderer. If France didn’t like the content that is on Telegram they could have just blocked the service in their country, but trying to impose censorship on a worldwide platform is real authoritarian behavior.

Goes to show you who the real devils in this world are. I mean the actual terrorists. Maybe one day, at least half of the human race will wake up and realize that all they have been telling us were mostly lies to maintain the current world order.

Sure but you should be worried about your privacy though.

Pavel is one of the last few persons still around that are able to fight censorship from government and I think this news is particularly bullish for Crypto. Everyone is rushing to open a short forgetting that historically, it is bullish for a dev to be arrested simply because they don't bend the knee. Well, this isn't the first time that TON has been in a legal issue with the government. It happened initially with its ICO and now with the CEO for censorship reasons.

We are slowly running out of platforms that are truly censorship free. What a time to be alive.

Privacy when it comes to personal data, like our mobile number and the information we might have shared with this miniapp that exists on Telegram. Recently, I  deleted my main account, which I use my local number to open since I began to hunt for airdrops.
 
I use a foreign number I bought online only for Telegram and other online apps that need mobile number verification. That way, I can reduce the level to which I expose my personal number.

He has been arrested in France. He was apprehended at Le Bourget airport in the outskirts of Paris after arriving via private jet. While the exact reasons for his arrest remain unclear, there are speculations that it might be related to the app’s possible use in money laundering, drug trafficking, or sharing of child sex abuse content. Telegram, with its focus on privacy and end-to-end encryption, has gained popularity worldwide, but it has also faced controversies due to its use by various groups and movements. As always, staying informed and cautious is essential when using any online platform.

Wow!!! The charges are numerous and I think this will not affect the operation of the social media.. because there are many businesses that are going on in that social media handle. Casinos are there and AirDrops and other businesses are going on there. And I checked the link you provided and it is not a pleasant news. Telegram from the onset was a scammers den where scammers hide and do their unthinkable activities. So if that handle is shut down, it won't be better. Though they will look for another platforms to start their operations.

Not trying to defend Durov here but by saying that the media platforms is a scammers den and should be shutdown simply means that the entire social media platforms needs to be shutdown because everyone of them is been used by the scammers to carry out there scams. Having to run a non censorship platform like telegram will only get you this kind of attention just like cryptocurrency has been charged long ago.

My only problem here is Durov himself was said to be aware that he is persona non grata to the France nation and has been away from Europe itself for a long term and all of a sudden goes there, you can’t simply ignore or fight the government like that. This charges are many and nobody knows what next, but my belief is he would secretly be requested to release some data to the government

That's the right thing to do, do they have jurisdiction over Durov on this matter they are acting like an international police they should have an official charge on this before they arrest him.

If they don't want Telegram in their country, they should block access; other countries welcome its use. We need more updates on this case. This is terrible timing. Just when Dogs is getting listed on top exchanges, Ton dropped 15% because of this news.

Durov's arrest is bad for societies that embrace freedom and liberty and it may harm other platforms with integration with Telegram.

Well, this is something I was not ready to read at all ...
How come they can accuse him of terrorism and money laundering if he has stakes in the second most popular messaging application on the planet? Something is fishy here.
Perhaps some of you are right and this has more to do with Telegram being one of the last standing keeps of freedom there is in the clear internet,.hopefully not, otherwise this could be the beginning of the end of Telegram how we know it and obviously this is going to negatively affect the future of Ton and the integrations it was supposed to have with the Application   :(

Funny thing, this news just breaks when I was about to buy some TON last night, I sure did miss a bullet here, for now.  :P

I have to agree that calling the platform scammers den is a bit harsh as I feel you are also correct in saying that labeling one means you must give them all the same label.

Scammers are going to frequent any platform that they can make money from. Whether that be Skype, telegram, Instagram, tiktok, Facebook, or even the forum.

Nothing is fishy, french prosecutors have in the past asked Telegram to close hundreds of channels because of child pornography, but telegram staff did nothing or when they acted they did after months. In May French authorities issued a list of those changes to be blocked, some ISP actually went further and blocked the whole t.me domain, it was quite a mess, it was after the largest pedo bust in France this year.

Durov knew about this, he was cited about this, he has been a French citizen since 2021, yet he never did one thing to clear his image or that of Telegram with the Frech prosecutors and now he thought, what the hell, I'll just visit France again and pretend nothing has happened despite being actually on the wanted list.
He did it knowingly, had he stayed in Dubai he would have not been arrested, had he not ignored that warrant and challenged it in court he wouldn't have ended up on the wanted list.


He is a French citizen arrested on French soil, of course, they have jurisdiction!


Oh the irony, crypto which was supposed to be decentralized drops 20% when a guy is arrested.
Talking about a single point of failure.

I didn't know these details but I can see that happening as its a pretty unrestricted platform. Yes, too bad they don't have better measures in place to counter that kind of stuff. I hope they do in the future; other than that, it would be a shame for Telegram to change or disappear. Its one of the few social medial platforms that can't be spied on from the backend so easily.

Durov tried at his best to avoid visiting France recent years but he thought something different this time and it's his mistake. Only he knew what he did this dangerous flight to France.

He has multiple citizenship, not only French.

Who is Pavel Durov, CEO of messaging app Telegram? (https://www.reuters.com/world/who-is-pavel-durov-ceo-messaging-app-telegram-2024-08-25/)

You must know reasons why they seized that plane. If there are solid reasons for the seizure, it's fine.

Generally speaking, I dislike censorship by governments.

There are some privacy messaging applications but I did not try them. Anyone here already used them, please share your experience that they are good or not. Maybe we will need to find some applications as alternatives to Telegram.

https://www.privacytools.io/privacy-messaging
End-to-end encrypted
https://getsession.org/
https://status.im/

For mobile https://signal.org/
For emails https://threema.ch/

For everyone wanting to move to another privacy app; I recommend checking out "Element" it's similar to Telegram, My friend uses it, although I haven't yet. I recommend doing your own research or asking other members about this website
https://element.io/

All of this news was indeed sudden and unexpected but thankfully I do not live in France.

I've cut all ties with users on telegram and wiped all chats(none of which were illegal, but the feds dont need to see that), going to uninstall the app soon.
I won't be on long as usual. The people here on Bitcointalk made me learn alot about privacy which was my new goal to be on the site and without their help I would've been absolutely lost regarding Privacy. I owed the community for helping me achieve my goal, which was why I'm even here right now. May not be anywhere near enough, but better than being a freeloader and doing nothing.

The west accuses Putin of being a dictator and then they jail the devs of decentralized mixing/wallet services and free speech platforms. Something tells me the west isn’t what they claim to be anymore.

I have no problems if they are fighting bad people but just a few months ago samurai wallet devs were also arrested and as far as I know they only coded the platform.

And this one happened in France. France, supposedly the home of free speech. Another French revolution is on the way it seems.

The French government is trying to make the argument that the use of disposable numbers and cryptocurrencies is somehow inherently criminal. The claim that there is no moderation on Telegram is also a lie. Channels with illegal or questionable content get removed all the time but when you have hundreds of millions of users it is impossible to remove these things entirely. Once you ban one group, a dozen more will be created to replace it. That is the struggle of every open platform which allows user generated content. This is not really about trying to fight against criminal activity, that is just the excuse they will use to justify censorship and surveillance. It will not surprise me if they demand that Telegram create a backdoor which allows them to scan encrypted private communication in order to “protect the children”.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/08/25/7lOll.png

What about Spain? They arrested McAfee and Roger Ver, and I'm sure there are many more cases that are not so exposed in many other countries. As @stompix has already written, this is not about France hunting people because they own social networks, but because they allow illegal content to be shared on their platforms, and child pornography has nothing to do with human rights and privacy. If he knew and didn't do anything, then he is just as guilty as those who published that content.

I hope the attention Telegram is currently getting because of these events will make users realize how unsafe, not privacy-oriented Telegram groups and bots are (no encryption possible, “no secret chats” for groups, bots and on desktop version).

If you're ever looking for an excellent alternative, there's SimpleX which is privacy-friendly: https://simplex.chat/

Activities to target Telegram started long time before the arrest hours ago.

FBI wanted to hire a Telegram engineer to set up backdoors on this application (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1827650575393067183) and Durov himself faced with some similar pressure in the past.

Freedom of speech is in Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech) and now the whole world with many governments are trying to enforce censorship and against the basic human rights.

Session is my favorite. It's truly anonymous and decentralized, in the sense that messages are broadcasted in a number of nodes, via onion routing, E2EE, and is fully peer-to-peer with no master servers with special rights. The nodes which transmit your encrypted message keep it temporarily and then discard it. (This is a disadvantage if recovering your messages without local backups is a problem for you.)

The main obstacle with these messenger apps is that very few people truly appreciate the privacy gains. Everyone doesn't care about their privacy until they do.

I was surprised that no one mentioned Nostr, and I am not really too clear about Nostr either, yet I hear many bitcoin podcasters who talk about and refer to Nostr, yet on the forum I have not seen or read too much about Nostr - and there are not too many threads in English about Nostr.  I might need to look more into it too, but I get a bit scared by too many technicalities.

There is one thread in English about Nostr that also links snort.social, (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5466085.msg62813070#msg62813070)  and on snort.social (https://snort.social/) there seems to be quite a bit of recent discussion of both Nostr and how it relates to Durov's arrest.

But, Nostr isn't a messenger, at least not just a messenger. It's an entire protocol for social media. And, to be frank with you, I neither understand how it works. Perhaps I haven't dedicated enough time to study the details, but it's absurd to me how can a Twitter clone run decentralized. It might be partially decentralized and partially federated, in the sense that a few nodes store the entire database, and need to be online at all times, otherwise users cannot connect. 

When I found out that Durov's arrest was due to censorship of his app, it became clear they were likely trying to gain access to create their usual backdoor, which they claim is essential for national security. This is an ongoing issue he's faced, which even drove him out of Russia. As a longtime follower of Durov on Telegram, I've seen him openly discuss these challenges as Telegram has grown. We shouldn't just report the arrest while ignoring the motive doing so would make us complicit in the oppression he has faced.

The arrest also made it pretty clear that every other major communication platform and app we use are being spied on. There are some nice suggestions in the thread and we should try them but here is the thing:

We know bisq is a truly decentralized exchange but everybody is still using binance.
We know monero is totally anonymous but the majority of people is still using btc and doing kyc checks voluntarily. (Nothing against btc but obviously xmr is superior to btc when it comes to privacy)

I think the majority don’t really care about their privacy and the governments know that damn well. Even in this forum there are hundreds of people who are ready to sell their passport information for a few bucks probably.

Not only that, some months ago there was an incident in which Spain as a country banned Telegram, alledging copyright problems because of the kind of content which is shared through the application. Many people on that country has perceived such action as a sample on how authoritarian governments in the western  hemisphere can be when comes to freedom of speech and privacy, if I recall correctly, access to Telegram was later re-established for people from Spain. Though it is a very clear precedent on how people are getting spied on, this is the kind of stuff Edward Snowden warned everyone about.

I just learned that Durov was interviewed by Tucker Carlson to which he said the Russian authorities tried to ask for the users database on Telegram but he refused. So he moved to Dubai and then at one point he tried to travel to France in a private jet and then this arrest happened so the France authorities would also be asking for the Telegram user database from him.

He is completely pinned and there is nothing he can do but give up our data to the Fench authorities. Every CEO with something the government wants will have jail time and be interrogated.

I'm pretty sure if you give people a good enough incentive (some sort of decent crypto payment, preferably BTC if possible), they will store the entire database/blockchain and they will even pay for the fastest available FTTH to serve users. ;)

It should be more like Bitcoin (applied game theory/mining incentive) and less like BitTorrent (seeding is optional).

Elon’s fate will be similar if Trump loses the elections. In a year or two I expect him to lose either his freedom or his companies if Trump loses.

That’s why he is so anti-democrat party lately because he doesn’t want to submit to their bullshit.

Twitter complies with almost every government censorship request. Elon Musk is not the free speech absolutist he claims to be.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/2/twitter-fulfilling-more-government-censorship-requests-under-musk

Thanks for the recommendation on Element! I've been looking for a more privacy-focused alternative to Telegram, so I'll definitely check it out and do some research.

By the way, is this what you're referring to? https://element.io/download

Completely understand your move to cut ties with Telegram and wipe your chats. Privacy is a huge concern these days, and it's great that you're taking steps to protect yourself.

Translation to plain-speak:

"We want you to use your real name and real contact info everywhere on the internet but we are not responsible if hackers abuse this data."

Fuck them.

"For some citizens, there's nothing left to hide—the government already has all their information. In countries like Russia, China, and North Korea, people may feel less concerned about concealing their identities, which could explain their attitudes. Major exchanges are being targeted by agencies like the FBI, which is why these platforms may be more inclined to comply with certain regulations that could restrict the listing of anonymous coins like Monero. Despite this, Monero remains actively used and traded, particularly for transactions on the darknet."

Telegram platform is not the only one that provides a high level of privacy for users, but it is the most popular and widely used worldwide.

What I do not understand is why he suddenly chose to go to France as if he wanted to face these charges himself at the same time that a defense committee could have represented him, and he is a billionaire who does not need to be in this position. We all know that these charges are malicious and their main goal is to pressure to change the platform's policies and it has nothing to do with whether the person is actually a terrorist or corrupt.

As for the Russian demand to France to liberate him, we can understand it within the framework of political reactions since France granted citizenship to Pavel after his country, Russia, imposed restrictions on him, and Russia is now pretending to stand by him on the grounds that he is a Russian citizen, and secondly because the Telegram application, with its anti-Western tracking policies, is a winning point for Russia since the West is harmed by them.

Pavel enjoys global popularity and I hope that things do not end up turning Telegram into a means of tracking its users.

I feel it's more for the fact that it "permits" illegal dealings and the sale of illicit drugs that the owner, Pavel got arrested. He's being detained in France as part of a judicial inquiry that involves 12 alleged criminal violations that includes drug trafficking, fraud, abetting organized crime transactions and refusing to share information to the law when necessary.
Of course. Although it's still good to know about this.

And now there is industry leaders that is saying this man needs to be released. That includes Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, and Vitalik Buterin.
They do think it is not fair he was arrested and can not have free speech. I do hope this man is released this week after he is being question for a few days in France. 
https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/edward-snowden-elon-musk-industry-leaders-reaction-telegram-founder-pavel-durov-arrest-19465563.htm

Out of curiosity, who exactly did you quote? I noticed you put quotation marks at the beginning and end of your post.


Durov has been released yesterday on $5 million bail.

Source https://www.politico.eu/article/france-charges-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-released-bail/

Hey, is anyone considering launching their tech startup in France at this point? I guess no.

Anyway, for a long time, I've been asking why everyone hates the French, but no one ever gave me any definite answer. I believe now we have one!

The way he went to France when he had an arrest order against him, and especially the circumstances in which he had obtained French citizenship (“foreign emeritus” procedure apparently carried out in dubious circumstances with government political support when he didn't meet the criteria to normally being granted French citizen) are fuelling rumors (in France at least), that he voluntarily went to Paris with the aim of being protected / watched over in France to potentially protect himself from Russian “intervention” in his regard. I don't know if there's any truth to this to be honnest, but perhaps he's afraid of “falling out of a window”.