Notes

Under Paris skies, cont. Victor Granic writes in re. Pavel Durov’s detention in France: “… the question is why Durov and not Musk or Zuckerberg. And for that matter why not arrest every software company exec whose company made tools that were used for nefarious pursuits. Why not sue or arrest Gates for causing security breaches because of bugs in the Windows operating system. Etc. The answer to me is clear—just because you built the gun doesn’t mean you committed the murder. So, it's unclear to me why Durov is being singled out.”

The Human Rights Foundation’s CEO Thor Halvorssen put the question to Durov at the Oslo Freedom Forum on Tuesday. Durov’s response:

“Well, I can only theorize about the reasons I was selected. I seem to be held to higher standards than most other platforms. We actually made some research; we compared Telegram with Instagram, with Facebook, with Snapchat, with other platforms here in France, and it seems that everybody has the same issues—with Telegram is actually more efficient in terms of moderation than all of these other platforms. And you’re right, you can accuse everybody in the same things that we were accused of. So we were quite puzzled. The reasons—maybe, because, I don’t know, we’re the only non-U.S. company; we’re not protected by this big American government that is very powerful. I’m not quite sure.”