Telegram CEO arrested in France over child sexual abuse material allegations

Telegram is facing a tumultuous future following the arrest of the company's CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, who was taken into custody by French authorities for the alleged distribution of child sexual abuse material, facilitation of drug trafficking, and more.

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If you are a Telegram user it's possible the app is facing significant headwind, with Durov's allegations claiming the CEO was complicit in aforementioned points, and also facilitated organised fraud and various other illegal transactions. Why does this put Telegram in between a rock and a hard place? Telegram's brand is an anti-moderation, anti-regulation, anti-government messaging service that prioritizes security and any inference from a governing body.

Durov's personal story is part of that brand, which includes the Telegram founder creating the popular messaging app as a retaliation to facing pressure from Russian authorities to hand over personal data from what he also created, VKontakte, Russia's largest social media platform at the time. Durov fled Russia and launched Telegram, which now has more than 950 million active users globally on a monthly basis.

"Telegram as a company is in a dilemma. On one hand, they probably do not want to have this kind of friction in this escalation that we're seeing right now, so they do have some incentive to comply with French laws. On the other hand, if they do, it signals to the world that they are willing to actually increase moderation, and they'll be going against the core of their product," Yevgeniy Golovchenko, assistant professor with the department of political science at the University of Copenhagen, told Euronews Next

However, with Durov's arrest the Telegram CEO faces the choice of cooperating with authorities to implement regulation into the popular app, significantly impacting the brand of the messaging service, or denying cooperating with French authorities only to face further personal punishment. However, there is always the chance that pushing back against the French authorities and winning results in fuel being tossed on an already burning bonfire.