- X CEO Elon Musk defended Telegram CEO Pavel Durov after his arrest in France.
- Durov’s arrest stemmed from an investigation of unlawful actions on Telegram, authorities stated.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, he turned a vociferous voice for the First Amendment and a “free speech absolutist.”
He shortly dialed again moderation on the favored social media platform, permitting all types of content material to flourish, a few of it hateful, a few of it controversial, a few of it misinformation, however all of it largely unfettered.
“Moderation is a propaganda phrase for censorship,” Musk as soon as stated.
He reminded his hundreds of thousands of followers of this in the present day after French police arrested Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, close to Paris on Saturday.
Police informed native media they’re investigating legal offenses — together with fraud, drug trafficking, and arranged crime — on Telegram. It comes after some European nations have accused Telegram of failing to reasonable legal content material.
If there is a kindred colleague for Musk on the market on the earth, it is Durov. The Telegram founder fled Russia to keep away from giving up person information for the Russian social media platform he based in 2006 known as Vkontakte. And he has repeatedly refused to curb content material on Telegram associated to the battle in Ukraine and Gaza, or of communications between teams thought of terrorists by some Western governments.
“We can not make messaging know-how safe for everyone besides terrorists,” Durov stated in an interview with CNN in February 2016. “It’s both safe or not safe.”
That type of message resonates with Musk, who, in a sequence of posts since Durov’s arrest, criticized the transfer as a violation of free speech.
“Liberté Liberté! Liberté?” he wrote in a single put up. “Dangerous instances,” he wrote in one other put up.
Musk added a “FreePavel” hashtag when he shared a video of Durov praising Musk and his pro-free-speech outlook throughout an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this 12 months.
“It is important to the assist of free speech that you simply ahead X posts to individuals you recognize, particularly in censorship-heavy international locations,” Musk wrote on X on Sunday.
He additionally reposted a tweet from Chris Pavlovski, the CEO of Rumble, a right-wing rival to YouTube. Pavlovski stated in a put up on Sunday that France “crossed a crimson line” with Durov’s arrest.
While Musk manufacturers himself a free speech absolutist, he has a historical past of silencing his critics. He has fired workers who disagreed with him and banned accounts important of him.
