Egregoros

📱❌🇷🇺 — CEO and Founder of Telegram Pavel Durov:
Russia has opened a criminal case against me for “aiding terrorism.”

Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech.

A sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people.

@Bernard that while we know that there are agencies that can access the contents of telegram and all other comms apps

@wizardmanperson
Telegram provides data to authorities on about 100,000 people every year. I suspect Pavel's arrest and detainment in France a year ago probably led to more of this. Any and every centralized platform is vulnerable to coercion or corruption.

People I know, IRL, constantly ask me for my Telegram handle, and I have to explain this. I work very hard to keep my Telegram account anonymous.

Pavel is a Russian Oligarch, so his alignment is fundamentally w/ Russia.

France arrested him as a way for the West to squeeze Russia on using TG as a propaganda device (which they do).

Now if Russia is going after him, that just means there's a rift between his clique and Putin.