It’s excellent article, not schizso. The author asks good questions.
Also: Pavel Durov visited Russia 50 times from 2015 to 2021 Павел Дуров приезжал в Россию более 50 раз с момента «изгнания» в 2014-м
en: Pavel Durov has visited Russia more than 50 times since his "exile" in 2014
Ukraine is in no way a “far right regime”
According to the Wall Street Journal, France and the Emirate of Dubai hacked Pavel Durov’s iPhone before naturalising him
He was released under judicial supervision with a bail bond of five million euros. He must appear twice a week before the police and he has been banned from leaving France.
Pavel was charged with the following:
conspiracy to administer an online platform to enable illegal transactions as part of an organized group;
refusal to provide information requested by authorized authorities;
distribution of hacking software, distribution of pornographic images of minors by an organized group, distribution of drugs, and complicity in fraud by an organized group;
laundering of money derived from the actions of an organized criminal group;
provision of cryptographic services aimed at ensuring confidentiality without mandatory declaration;
illegal provision and importation of cryptographic equipment.
According to AFP and France Info, in addition to the Telegram case, Paris is investigating Durov for violence against his son, who was born in 2017. Russian media reported citing sources that the child abuse case is not related to Durov’s detention and he has not been questioned in the case. Irina Bolgar, the mother of Durov’s three children, filed a lawsuit against the businessman in Switzerland, accusing him of child abuse.
The EU authorities are also investigating the case, believing that Telegram may have understated the number of users in the EU to avoid complying with regulations for large IT companies, the Financial Times reported.
This appears to be the case with the Digital Service Act (DSA), the main law that regulates internet platforms in the EU
The key problem here is that any platform where users can upload content and interact has the potential to result in illegal content or interactions.
There will always be controversy about what should and should not be considered illegal, but almost everyone agrees that at least a few things should be, like child pornography, credible personal violent threats, leaks of military secrets, etc.
However, once you have the infrastructure in place to enforce those things, you can use it to enforce anything, including those things that are obviously politically partisan, the suppression of free speech, and so on.
You can either use technology to make it virtually impossible to moderate anything at all, or you can leave the option open at which point now governments have access to abuse that right, which they will do if they can get away with it and it benefits them.
Overall I get the impression that France is now an authoritarian banana republic like Brazil or the UK and maybe soon (or already?) as bad as Russia or China. What I don’t understand is why Durov even went to France?
And even if it was that’s not a justification for Russia to invade.
France is getting dangerously close to a country like Russia or China, as I see on a daily basis.
-Journalists and strikers have been bugged
France almost passed a law banning the use of VPNs
-A law was recently passed giving the right to block social networks on request in the event of a demonstration, and New Caledonia has not had access to Tiktok for 1 month already.
-The proliferation of facial recognition cameras across the country
-The government is working on a digital identity for every citizen
-The media shitting themselves and not daring to talk about certain subjects and lacking neutrality, not to mention a very large number of censors on YT, X etc.
Bullshit. Tell this to the millions of people in labor camps in China and Russia.
I didn’t tell you about labour camps, but about mass surveillance, censorship, media manipulation, etc. Read over what I said before replying.
It’s still not even a close comparison. For example. In france, people are free to criticize this decision while in China or Russia people are not free to criticize gov’t decisions.
Even just considering these aspects it’s nonsense. How many times have you been to China?
France and China are worlds apart, I really don’t get why you have the impression that France is as bad as China in terms of authoritarianism.
I made it clear in my comments that France, like Europe, was slowly but surely moving closer to Russia and China, slowly but surely, which is not the case at the moment.
France (and other countries) wanted to pass a law banning VPNs, and some demonstrators found themselves on the S list (normally reserved for terrorists) for having used Signal, Whatsapp, Proton, Tor etc., because after all, why use these tools?
The proliferation of facial recognition cameras in public spaces
Europe has been trying to break encryption for some time now, with France pushing for a law for years.
In France, for example, it’s forbidden to criticise Israel and its government, on pain of being prosecuted as an anti-Semite (even though there’s nothing to do with it), with social networks being monitored in this way
I’ve never been to China, and neither have many of us, but how far does the state have to go to say that the limit has been reached?
Alright, I need to backpedal a bit. France is obviously not comparable with China. Yet. And hopefully it never will be like China. But the point is, it’s going in that direction. It’s becoming more and more authoritarian and freedoms are getting eroded in little slices.
By the way: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.” - Art. 35 of the PRC constitution.
Of course, in China, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of consequences. So you best think twice if your opinion could be divisive or harmful or hateful or misinformation. My point is: there’s nothing stopping a country like France from becoming like China in a couple of decades. Just because we think of it as “free” now and just because it has some laws guaranteeing civil liberties doesn’t mean it can’t change in the future. The example of Hong Kong shows how quickly a strong government can crack down and remove liberties,
By the way I’ve been to China multiple times for several months each and it’s actually a very nice country to live in. You just need to not talk about politics and make sure you have a working VPN before you arrive. Maybe the same will be true for France (or the UK or Germany) in 20 years, who knows.
Only using CNC-approved VPNs are legal for private use and that you can go to jail for using others. While this is only enforced occasionally, it’s quite a risk to take. These approved VPNs enforce blocking of China-critical services and are obligated to log user data. There is nothing to gain in terms of privacy or freedom from using these VPNs.
The case of Hong Kong has zero similarity with France. In France you don’t have a neighbor state who is overwhelmingly powerful to fully take control within a few weeks over your country and without other states even thinking about to intervene.
There is no freedom of speech in China. Stop spreading propaganda.
You misunderstood. Obviously there’s no freedom of speech in China. Yet, their constitution says there is. The conclusion is that theoretically having freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can actually speak freely if there’s various exceptions to it or if the government just decides to persecute you anyway. That’s the slippery slope I see in the West: more and more exceptions to free speech, and the arrest of Pavel Durov is an example for that because clearly the issue they have is that Telegram is not “moderated” enough, rather than that they forgot to file some declaration about cryptography.
“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of consequences” is a sentence that nobody should say unironically because it’s the exact logic that China uses.
I strongly disagree.
Freedom of speech of course mean you are free to speak about anything without consequences
Free definition
Saying there is freedom of x just because you technically can do something doesn’t make sense. You are free to kill someone, but you’ll go to jail - so there is no “freedom of murder”.
