Is Durov a New Assange? Or Is Musk the Next Durov?
The Durov Affair reveals that society is shifting from “a revolt of the public” to a digital “big state”
After four days in custody, Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov has been placed under formal investigation and ordered to remain in France under judicial supervision, with a bail set at 5 million euros. The allegations include a vast number of crimes, most notably “complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions,” according to Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau. She also says that Telegram had appeared in multiple criminal cases but showed “near total absence of a response” to authorities’ requests for cooperation.
So far, Durov’s “complicity” seems to involve, first, creating and maintaining a platform used by criminals, and second, Telegram’s alleged failure to address illegal activities. If Durov did not commit those crimes personally, then he was arrested for the “lack of moderation” and the “failure to cooperate with authorities.”
Considering the range of charges, the investigation will likely last months, maybe years, turning the breaking news about an unprecedented arrest into an ongoing “Durov Affair,” which will involve issues far beyond the immediate allegations against Durov and Telegram. Besides concerns over “censorship vs. online safety,” the case will signify the completion of institutions’ adaptation to digital challenges. Institutional control over the public sphere and people’s lives was shattered by the initial spread of the internet; now the institutions are regaining control. The state is tightening its grip.
Out of Control
Telegram is not just a popular text messaging app; it is an ecosystem that also includes news and expert channels, photo and video sharing, and online communities of all kinds—from local to professional to hobbyist. The app offers encrypted communication that is impossible to crack. The feature seems to be attractive to criminals and terrorists. But regular people—almost 1 billion of them around the world—also enjoy Telegram. To compare: X/Twitter has about 340 million monthly users. Telegram is used by 45% of online users in India, almost 40% in Brazil, 34% in Mexico, and so on.
There is one more specific category of users that particularly values encrypted messaging: political dissidents and protesters. Telegram played a significant role in the 2017-2018 Iranian protests, as more than half of the population there uses the app. The 2020-2021 anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus were even labeled the “Telegram Revolution,” mirroring the “Twitter revolutions” of 2009-2011.
But there is also another big player in the field: the state. The state wants to know what criminals and terrorists are doing, but also what protesters and regular folks are up to. And so do corporations. As the latest memes go, “Mark Zuckerberg sells people’s personal information, and he is a free man. Pavel Durov doesn’t, and he is in the jail.” But these are the memes; the state’s approach is more nuanced, of course.
All in all, Telegram can be used by criminals, terrorists, protesters and regular folks—as can any technology. Is it possible to separate one type of user from another? Durov says “no.” It is either privacy for everyone or for nobody.
Durov, who co-founded Telegram in 2013 with his brother Nikolai, is known as a self-professed libertarian fighting for privacy rights. Born and raised in Russia, he fled his home country in 2014 when the Kremlin’s secret services demanded he hand over data on the organizers of the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests from his previous social network, VKontakte. He refused.
Durov holds citizenship in Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the United Arab Emirates and France. He may not be as prominent in the digital world as Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, but with a net worth estimated between $9 billion (Bloomberg) and $15 billion (Forbes) and Telegram ranking fourth after WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger, Durov is nonetheless a big player whose personal security considerations have to include political and geopolitical concerns. After leaving Russia, he considered settling in Europe, Singapore or the United States but eventually chose Dubai for its business- and tax-friendly environment. As he also admitted in an interview to Tucker Carlson, he tried to avoid visiting “major geopolitical powers,” preferring places that “align with our values and what we do.”
Telegram has faced increasing scrutiny from various governments demanding tighter moderation and information sharing. The company, however, insists that it “abides by EU laws” and that “its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving.” In any case, digital regulators in developed countries typically impose economic and administrative penalties, such as restrictions and fines on wayward tech companies. Arresting Telegram’s CEO for “lack of moderation” or “failure to address misuse of the platform” seems like an overreach. The list of accusations is long and terrifying, but how much of this justifies a criminal warrant against Durov personally is unclear. A case of this kind has never been brought before.
More Behind the Scenes?
This discrepancy between accusations against the platform and the harsh action taken against its CEO and co-founder might indicate that there is more going on behind the scenes.
Amid the vague information surrounding Durov’s arrest, one detail stands out and might hint at more intriguing theories surrounding the event. When he was arrested, Durov had just arrived in France from Azerbaijan, where Russian President Vladimir Putin also happened to be at the time. Some observers speculate that Durov sought an audience with Putin to secure economic or safety guarantees but did not succeed. Other conspiracists surmise that Durov met with Telegram’s silent partners in Azerbaijan and that something significant was decided, leading to his urgent apprehension by the French police at the behest of the Americans.
Telegram has a complicated relationship with Russia. It was banned there in 2018, but the block was later lifted after authorities confirmed that the platform agreed to “counter terrorism and extremism.” Messenger is highly popular among Russian military bloggers covering the war in Ukraine and is reportedly used for real-time battlefield coordination by the Russian military. Rumors even hold that some Russian combatants are panicking as they cannot be sure that Durov has not traded crypto keys to Telegram channels for his (relative) freedom while in French custody.
Telegram is also widely used by Ukrainians, both military and civilian; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even has an official Telegram channel. However, some Ukrainians believe that Telegram is one of the most successful global special operations of the Russian secret service, and that the stories about Durov’s devotion to encryption and privacy, and his alleged business exile from Russia due to tension with the secret service, are merely a cover-up.
Additionally, as many observers have noted, Durov received a French passport in 2021 through a fast-tracked and rare procedure for granting citizenship, known as “foreigner emeritus,” which allows the French government to waive the regular process for someone who “contributes to the influence of France.” Clearly, the French saw him as a valuable asset. President Emmanuel Macron himself met with Durov on several occasions, and even the possibility of setting up Telegram’s headquarters in France was discussed. Not only did Durov prefer Dubai, but he also refused to “communicate information” about Telegram users to the French authorities. After granting him a French passport under the president’s patronage and through a special procedure, this is insulting.
Which of these factors, or their combination, is truly at play remains unknown. Regardless, Durov is certainly an international person of interest and perhaps a person of interest in the big game of special services, which makes his situation similar to that of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. However, conspiracy theories do not negate the fact that French prosecutors have advanced allegations against him “over suspected complicity in various crimes” related to Telegram. Whether this is a smokescreen for something else or not, it’s what the broader public is being presented with.
And a part of that public seems to be pleased with the fact that a tech billionaire has been arrested for “lack of moderation” on social media. “Arresting Telegram’s Pavel Durov could be a smart move. Tech bosses care more about themselves than you. He has been praised for refusing to share data with the Kremlin. But if targeting CEOs worries Musk, Zuckerberg et al., so be it,” writes a columnist in The Guardian.
Indeed, when Musk reacted to Durov’s arrest with supportive tweets, some said Musk was panicking. For example, former National Security Council and White House senior adviser, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman tweeted: “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”
There are likely no reasons for Zuckerberg or Musk to panic yet, although their security teams will certainly double-check the legal risks in the countries they travel to (especially since Musk is not always overly charitable to European bureaucrats). But nevertheless, how did it come to pass that these billionaires—leaders of digital progress and providers of digital infrastructure for democracy—are now at the center of a debate about possible or even desirable legal retaliation, and not in conspiracy chats or anarcho-socialist squats, but in The Guardian and the statements of officials?
The Public’s Revolt(s)
The internet was seen as the planetary library in the 1990s (Web 1.0), and then as the global communication venue in the 2000s (Web 2.0). So why did it start being perceived as a global threat to everything—from the state and democracy to childhood and people’s mental health—in the 2010s and 2020s? It is this perception of the internet as a worldwide menace that has led to an unusual consensus: Tech leaders are seen as both enemies of the state and enemies of the people. With this consensus, any form of regulation or worse (for them) becomes increasingly possible.
This transition took 20 years. First, the internet gave people access to information and self-_expression_. This allowed them to set agendas independently of the mainstream media. Soon, users revealed how different their agendas were from those promoted by the establishment in their country. This led to civil unrest around the world, known as the Twitter revolutions—from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring. Martin Gurri referred to this process as the “crisis of authority” in his book “The Revolt of the Public.”
In the early 2010s, the “revolt of the public” was largely seen as a positive shift toward social justice and progress. A major reason was the demographics of the protesters, many of whom were early users of social media, which means they were educated, young, urban and progressive. They led the anti-establishment movements everywhere, be it the White-ribbon protests in Putin’s Russia or the Occupy Wall Street movement in Obama’s America.
As has always happened throughout history, the first adopters of a powerful new medium—whether it be iron tools, printing or social media—acquire power and begin imposing their values on the rest of the world. In the early 2010s, legacy media, corporations and governments rushed to adopt digital technologies and eventually aligned with the values of the then-prevailing demographics of digital media: the young, educated, digital progressives.
In the meantime, social media permeated deeper into society and “emancipated the authorship” of older, less urban, less educated and less progressive demographics, formerly known as the “silent majority.” No longer silent thanks to social media, these people gained the opportunity to talk publicly and, much like their progressive predecessors from a few years earlier, they revealed how significantly their agendas differed from the mainstream, which was already saturated with progressive ideas.
The new wave of the Revolt of the Public—now the conservative public—led to Brexit and the electoral victories of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán and other conservatives. This was an anti-establishment rebellion, too. In terms of media ecology, Trump’s rise was the completion of the Occupy Wall Street movement, albeit on a different social-demographic basis.
Today, the global Revolt of the Public, caused by changes in the dominant medium from print to digital, seems to have exhausted its demographic potential. The first, progressive wave of the anti-establishment movements disrupted the old balance and infiltrated old institutions with progressive ideas and cadres. The second, reactionary and conservative wave of the anti-establishment movements has restored a balance between progressivism and conservatism.
However, this new balance is highly unstable and conditioned by polarization. It rests not on a heavy center but on heavy margins. As the global media transition from print to digital is nearly complete, so too is the global Revolt of the Public. Instead, due to the high volatility of the social balance, local revolts of the public and local crises of authority are likely to become permanent, caused by local events such as the upcoming presidential election in the U.S.
In all these disturbances, the formation of the new establishment appears to be complete, too: The old capitalist elites absorbed the carriers of progressive values from the digital elites and academia. These new elite’s recruits acquired significant power in corporate, administrative and public structures. The power of the old establishment was based on control over gatekeeping in media, education and mass culture. In the new digital environment, this function has transitioned to digital platforms. Consequently, the new establishment, which has internalized progressive values but keeps clinging to power, now seeks to expand its control over these platforms.
Paradoxically, such a development has made platform capitalism more receptive to the essentially socialist idea of a big state. The reason is that digital platforms, as institutional forms, are not only large (indeed, they are larger than states) but also tend to encompass all human activities. They literally call for the totality of regulation over human life. This is why platform capitalism is inherently more “socialist” and totalitarian than was industrial capitalism, with its frequent disregard for human life.
The first signs of the successful adaptation of the establishment to the novelty of digital networks were seen in China and Russia. For example, the early-2010s protest movement in Russia was particularly disturbing for the elites, when Alexei Navalny, the prominent opposition leader who recently died in prison, learned to use the online mechanisms of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for his daring political projects. The solution, however, was found: The authorities criminalized dissent and started using the same mechanisms of social networking and online banking in reverse—to suppress anyone connected to the center of this dissent, i.e. Navalny himself.
A similar strategy, as if copied from Putin’s playbook, was later used in Canada when the government crushed the Freedom Convoy, a networked movement protesting vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions. The criminalization of dissent provided the government with legal means to target the protesters using the same networking mechanisms they had employed. Crowdfunding was prosecuted in reverse: Donors who supported the political protests found themselves accused of sponsoring criminal activities, with corresponding personal restrictions from banks. More than 200 bank accounts worth nearly $8 million were frozen. Dispersed contributions of users’ activity, a hallmark and pride of the digital grassroots movement in the early 2010s, have turned into dispersed surveillance and retaliation by the government.
The Restoration Has Begun
The Revolt of the Public is over; the Restoration has commenced. Digital platforms, from social media to online payment systems, are shifting from virtual facilitators of anti-establishment protests to tools of surveillance and punishment on behalf of the establishment.
This is the context in which the phrase “failure to cooperate with authorities” in the accusations against Durov should be understood. The Durov Affair might be an isolated incident, but it also signals the completion of institutions’ digital readjustment. Amid this signal, various observers are tempted to discuss the fate of the biggest players, Zuckerberg and Musk, as these two now symbolize, for many, the threats posed by social media to the state, democracy, public safety, public health and everything in between.
Zuckerberg, while being more cautious and “cooperative” than Musk, also shows signs of concern. On the same day that the French prosecutors confirmed Durov’s arrest, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, in which he admitted that the Biden administration had repeatedly pressured Facebook to censor users. He expressed regret for not being more outspoken about it and assured that the company would push back if this occurred again.
Had this pressure to censor come 20, even 10 years ago, the scandal in the media would have been enormous. But now the news was largely disregarded by most of the media. Nevertheless, the confession is unprecedented. Some might think that Zuckerberg has data predicting Trump’s victory, and this unusual confession is made to serve as a shield against potential future retaliation from the Trump administration.
However, the true reason is likely more banal: The House Judiciary Committee is conducting an investigation into content moderation practices, and evidence of Facebook’s complicity with censorship pressure will be revealed anyway. So, Zuckerberg’s confession is likely an attempt to mitigate possible retaliation from today’s House, which is dominated by Republicans. Anyway, as Matt Taibbi, an investigator of the “Twitter Files” on censorship in the old pre-Musk Twitter, noted in his piece on Zuckerberg’s confession, “governments everywhere tighten their grip on the internet.”
What can Elon Musk expect—with his explicit bet on Trump? His gamble might turn out to be “all in.” If it fails, the “Twitter Files” will appear as a trifle compared to what will follow. Twitter began the Revolt of the Public in 2009; it would be ironic if Twitter also finally inaugurates the complete restoration of institutions.