Are you all aware of the recent arrest in France of Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov?  I've been keeping up with this story because it has a bit of twists and turns to it.  Apparently, Telegram (an end to end encrypted messaging app) is worth billions and is used for good reasons and it sounds like from the arrest warrant some really bad things too.  Telegram is less regulated and moderated and I think that's were the problem is?  The arrest includes drug trafficking, human trafficking and sexual images of children to name a few.

I also noticed that the founder of Rumble, Chris Pavlovski, CEO, tweeted about Durov's arrest days after the arrest and apologized about commenting so late and the reason his response was late is because he was in Europe at the time and fled Europe after the Durov's arrest as he feared "they" might also be after him.

The plot thickens, as I also recently read that Elon Musk is now limiting his travel.

I watch these stories because as a webmaster, you always have to be aware of international laws, as well as your own countries laws.

I think this will be interesting to follow.  What are your opinions?

UK  are using recently introduced legislation to shut down any criticism of Government policy regarding immigration as they can attach  inciting racial hatred to an incident and it becomes a serious crime.  Recently three young female children were stabbed to death, this follows a huge increase in stabbings in UK.  The public had had enough so demonstrations took place.  No buildings were set alight, no stores looted, no-one died but a 59 year old grandmother was jailed for 20 months for posting a volatile comment on facebook, another guy in his 60s also jailed for (as video imagery suggests) merely confronting police over the manner they arrested another person.  Because all these people were protesting about the same issue there is a law in UK that if 12 or more people act together in disorder it is deemed a riot, big prison sentences.  Of course this legislation not used for any previous disorders, BLM of Hamas etc. These people were at their wits end as Government have done nothing about illegal immigration and stabbings.  Anyone complaining about Government policy is labelled 'Far Right'

We are not becoming like China, we are surpassing China.

I've seen the UK's Online Safety Bill.  If you have a link for the new legislation the UK is proposing, please share.  I did a search for it, but I didn't find it, probably because I didn't have the right key words in my search.  Really not surprised another bill is in the works.  The US will be following soon, and likely, our election in November will be the perfect storm to precipitate the action of immediate legislation or even martial law.  Not even sure what to expect this November.

I did see in the news about the stabbings of the young women and that's really sad.  On your protests, at least the protestors didn't damage property.  Here in the US, there's no such restraint and everything gets out of control.

I'm sorry to hear about the grandmother that has been in jail for 20 months.  We have that here too, as there were some older women praying at an abortion center, maybe protesting, can't recall the whole story, that have now been convicted to serve 10 years in jail.  I think there's a difference between violent protesting and peaceful protesting but here in the US, there's varied enforcement depending on what administration is in charge at the time.

That's a harsh law for protesting in the UK, if you are imprisoned on a long sentence, especially if it was peaceful.  We have a substantial immigration issues too.

This is a UK Government web site giving an overview of the legislation.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer

Geffers

Here's another interesting comment from Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.  Hope it displays ok as it is a twitter (aka X) post.

https://x.com/durov/status/1831984752359813503?t=hcDOE5ZzT9u5d_urS2tpZg&s=08

Geffers G said:

This is a UK Government web site giving an overview of the legislation.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer

Geffers

Thanks Geffers!  I have your link open to read and study.  I was aware that countries outside of the EU had liability too.  I'll dig deeper reading this now.

Geffers G said:

Here's another interesting comment from Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.  Hope it displays ok as it is a twitter (aka X) post.

https://x.com/durov/status/1831984752359813503?t=hcDOE5ZzT9u5d_urS2tpZg&s=08

Durov said everything that needed to be said about the challenges of having a large online website and the challenges of compliance with every country.  I'm glad he put out a statement on what Telegram does on a regular basis and the current status of evaluating their platform for safety.  Must be a daunting task to meet so many international requirements.

Guess big companies have lawyers working on this 24/7.

Governments make rules, have no idea how to implement those rules but don't care, onus is on the companies to comply.

Geffers G said:

Guess big companies have lawyers working on this 24/7.

Governments make rules, have no idea how to implement those rules but don't care, onus is on the companies to comply.

 

Yes, the onus is on the company to comply and believe me there are a significant amount of challenges for a company to meet all of those requirements internationally and you're so right, when a company is that big, they have an onsite fully staffed legal department.  I'm sure Telegram has some top notch lawyers, but even those lawyers can fail on what they think is a good TOS or Privacy statement.  It takes just one line in the documents that isn't complete indemnification and a judge will rule in the client's favor in an instant.