The reason is clear. He wasn't sharing any personal and message data from its users with intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
Even ProtonMail which wrongly claims to be a privacy safe heaven does so!
Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
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Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
CEO getting arrested does not mean telegram will go down. Direct involvement with scams? You got to be kidding me. This guy is worth 15 billion USD, he does need to do anything. It's about lack of cooperation in censoring content.
> Direct involvement with scams? You got to be kidding me. This guy is worth 15 billion USD, he does need to do anything. I have no knowledge about this and make no assumptions about whether or not he is involved in any kind of financial misconduct - but there are many cases of very rich people doing risky and illegal things to further grow their wealth, despite already having more than enough money.
Someone with $15bn is certainly going to take risks to get more, but running a pedo web ring does not offer that scale of money.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#563The quality of posts in this thread are unusually low for Hacker News. Is this place being brigaded? Extremely uncharitable readings and frankly conspiracy theories everywhere.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23486170>
Email concerns to mods at hn@ycombinator.com
Though yes, this thread is overall quite low quality. Sigh.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love for LinkedIn to be banned. I just play along there because it's the only option if you want to get a job. But the people repeating sickening corporate PR and marketing crap there making me nauseous. It's 100x more fake than Facebook. I really hate it. If it'd be banned I could do without it because nobody would have it.
So a website you don't like you would ban for everybody else as well just because you decided that it is merely marketing crap there making you nauseous. So you then conclude it should be banned for everyone else? How do you think the world would look if everybody had the power to ban things with similar reasons? We'd have nothing left in the world. Scary.
I know, it's just wishful thinking on my part :) It won't happen but that doesn't mean I can't wish for it.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't open source apps like Jabber or Element which do not require a phone number and allow to host your own server, a much better playground?
Yes, and XMPP over Tor already seems to be popular on the dark web.
It was the default method of contacting the dealers on Russian darknet when everything was a just a message board (hell, it was available without TOR) and not a proper marketplace
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#566They went full Ulbricht on him: terrorism, drugs, fraud, money laundering, piracy and involvement with child exploitation.
"Full Ulbricht" is quite a leading term. You could just as well say "full Bankman-Fried". From my reading it sounds like the man is as guilty as sin and knows it.
I can see your point. I should qualify that -- my comparison was just on the indictment only, in that they threw the crimes of every user into his indictment, like they did with Ulbricht.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've seen, it's the opposite. Nobody wants an outsider coming into their territory and committing a crime. And it also makes you a flight risk, so that's going to factor badly into any pre-trial detention.
> Nobody wants an outsider coming into their territory and committing a crime. Right but they don't want to deal with them either. They'll deport someone and ban them from entry (which can often be done essentially at will) rather than putting them through the whole legal process and potentially dealing with protests from their country of citizenship.
This is absolutely true, also.
In fact, in Illinois there is a specific statute to cover this. The Dept of Corrections can simply dispose of someone's sentence and hand them to ICE for deportation. I knew a Mexican guy who had a 6 year term and I heard from him 6 weeks after he was sentenced -- he was back with his family in Mexico, having had his sentence terminated and quickly deported.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
Private chats are a hassle to initiate and not multi-device. Most use normal chats. With anonymous accounts, using anonymous +888 numbers, whose price has increased from $16 to $1000+ in a matter of a year, it is indeed a very convenient playground for all sorts of activities.
Why would a criminal mastermind pay $1000 for an anonymous Telegram account when they could buy a burner phone with a prepaid SIM included for like $20 to register and throw it out? In my experience the people who buy those are more Durov superfan than Keyser Söze. And evidence of criminality on Telegram predates the Fragment numbers by a while - for instance in like 2014-2015 pretty much the only time Telegram was i…
Some countries require you to provide a government id, which is logged, to get a new sim.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Direct involvement with scams? You got to be kidding me. This guy is worth 15 billion USD, he does need to do anything. I have no knowledge about this and make no assumptions about whether or not he is involved in any kind of financial misconduct - but there are many cases of very rich people doing risky and illegal things to further grow their wealth, despite already having more than enough money.
Someone with $15bn is certainly going to take risks to get more, but running a pedo web ring does not offer that scale of money.
Exploration geophysics (large area mapping in search of resources) loses money hand over fist .. it's like sinking money into lottery tickets .. and yet billionaires routinely dabble in it and a few own companies that take on contract work, lose money and act as tax write offs for other parts of their business.
It's about the contacts and the advance inside knowledge.
Circling back to an alledged "pedo web ring" ala, say, Epstein .. the big pay off wouldn't be connected to "services" and charging access to view materials, the real money (if any was being made) would be in "blackmail" and "quid pro quo" investment infomation etc.
Once a few whales are landed, say past and future POTUS candidates, C-Suites of mega tech companies, bankers, etc. what limit is there on making money from tips in exchange for keeping a few secrets?
I have zero knowledge re: the Telegram founder and any of this, but history is littered with rumours of elite clubs, cosy finnancial arrangements and getting away with the breaking of convential rules. (eg: one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier)
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#570So much for “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”. I wonder if this will help push founders more to the US.
This was the reason Telegram is based in Dubai, it was bad move from Durov flying to France.
No, that doesn't matter in the least. It is trivial to kick him off the Western appstores and arrest him in Dubai, so it really doesn't matter. He was allowed to operate - almost certainly in some kind of a deal - until he wasn't.