ProPublica: “…Late last month, Telegram burst into the news with another arrest related to alleged criminal activity on the giant messaging and social media platform. This time, the man in police custody was the company’s founder, Pavel Durov. French authorities detained the Russian-born billionaire after his plane touched down at an airport a few miles north of Paris. French prosecutors issued preliminary charges against Durov last Wednesday related to alleged criminal activity on his platform. The allegations include organized fraud, drug trafficking and possession of pornographic images of minors, as well as refusal to cooperate with authorities, according to a press release by the Paris public prosecutor. David-Olivier Kaminski, a lawyer for Durov, could not be reached for comment. French news reports quoted him saying that it was “totally absurd to think that the person in charge of a social network could be implicated in criminal acts that don’t concern him, directly or indirectly.” The platform Durov created has long been both applauded and derided for its extreme commitment to free speech and for rebuffing inquiries from both U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies, which have sought to gather information about alleged criminal activity on the platform. “They are exceedingly unhelpful,” said Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. Weiner, who oversees one of the world’s largest metropolitan counterterrorism units, said the platform was notable for “being a center of gravity for a wide range of extremist content” and for its “unwillingness to work with law enforcement.” Telegram’s ease of use, its huge public channels and the ability to encrypt private conversations have helped fuel its global appeal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used the app to rally his compatriots to repel the Russian invasion. Activists in Hong Kong turned to Telegram to organize demonstrations against a repressive law. In Belarus, pro-democracy forces used the platform to fight back against election fraud. But the platform has also served as the online home of the Russian mercenary company Wagner Group, which has posted gruesome videos of extrajudicial killings. In April, the British government targeted the Terrorgram Collective, a subset of Telegram users who promote racially and ethnically motivated terrorism to people like Lightner, making it a crime to support or belong to the group. And more recently, the service played a key role in fomenting the anti-immigrant riots that swept across the United Kingdom. ProPublica and FRONTLINE have been investigating Telegram’s role in a string of recent alleged far-right acts of sabotage and murder, and how the company’s inaction allowed extremists to plan and even advertise their crimes. Researchers have long warned that Telegram routinely allows extremists to share propaganda aimed at inciting violence, noting that the Islamic State group and al-Qaida were able to use the service for years with little interference…”