My friend Wilder wrote (my commentary below):
"I'm traveling to France on Tuesday and just thinking:
If Pavel Durov deserves 20 years in prison for not cooperating with the French government and thus supporting terrorist groups and the spread of child pornography, then I, who publicly defends him (because I would never cooperate with the state either, just like I haven't worked for it for ten years now), thus also supporting terrorist groups and the spread of child pornography, would also deserve at least some seven years in a French prison :-)
And now, seriously - where did Pavel Durov make a mistake:
He designed the whole Telegram in such a way that it is not end-to-end encrypted (unlike, for example, Signal or SimpleX); thus, Telegram has and had the technical ability to eavesdrop and censor its users, which by law it should have taken advantage of and shown a public "cooperative effort" when they ran out of court orders from any country, which they didn't.
On the contrary, Pavel Durov was reduced to criticizing Signal's security and making up stories that there were backdoors.
No one will likely arrest Signal's creator, Moxie Marlinspike, or its president, Meredith Whittaker, because they can claim they tried hard to cooperate with the state. Still, unfortunately, due to Signal's end-to-end encrypted design, they failed purely technically to eavesdrop or censor anyone who used Signal.
Who I think can be locked up in this case (not just in France) is Elon Musk, because he literally brags about how he is throwing in the trash court orders from various states to censor posts on X.com and therefore realistically refusing to cooperate with states. He has a personal dispute with the Brazilian Chief Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, whose court orders he publicly ignores. Musk has closed the X.com office in Brazil, and I would not go to Brazil if I were him unless he wants to end up like Durov in France.
Even though I don't use Telegram and never have (it's simply not secure because it doesn't support end-to-end encrypted communication by default) and I urge all people not to use it (and switch to Signal or SimpleX), I don't think people like Durov or Musk should end up in jail.
Realistically, it doesn't help anyone or anything.
The Western world will reveal its disgusting totalitarian mask, in which censorship and control of information is as close to it as any other totalitarian country.
Terrorists, criminals, drug distributors (in Russia and Ukraine, they all use Telegram), and child pornography distributors will simply switch to Signal, SimpleX, or some other end-to-end encrypted platform, and the state can no longer monitor them at all.
And the arrest of Durov may just accelerate this process."
Exactly. As people whose channels, pages and socials accounts were censored moved to Telegram to avoid censorship, now they'll move to end to end encrypted systems like Signal, SimpleX. There's one interesting option, which needs some more development and it's Keet - the advantage is that there are no servers, not even relays, it is peer to peer. There's no one to arrest, no server to turn off. SimpleX uses server infrastructure (they are called relays, similar to Nostr), but anyone can operate a SimpleX relay.
Check out my comparison of the to end encrypted messengers. Telegram was never a good option.