Free Speech v. Abetting Criminality

The arrest of the CEO of Telegram by France raises questions about when society can hold social media platforms accountable for enabling criminal activity.

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born co-founder and CEO of the messaging service, Telegram.

Note: Updated to add the specific charges Durov is facing in France.

New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 after news reports showed decoy accounts of children on its social media platforms drew “a stream of egregious, sexually explicit images” - even after an expression of disinterest.

The lawsuit alleges that Facebook and Instagram are “breeding grounds” for predators targeting children for human trafficking, grooming and solicitation.

For years, child sexual exploitation has been cited as a persistent problem at Facebook and Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly claims Meta is using sophisticated technology to attack the problem, but it persists.

Torrez in February began investigating Facebook’s paid subscription services after published reports showed some accounts featuring children under age 13 are patronized mostly by adult males in search of sexual gratification.

When the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, 39, a dual citizen of Russia and France, was arrested in France last week, the first inclination of many in the U.S. tech community was to decry an assault on free speech.

“It’s Telegram today, It’ll be X tomorrow,” warned Elon Musk.

It could well be that Durov’s arrest is an assault on free speech, but it also may be a reasonable response to a rogue social media platform’s decision to indirectly profit from criminal activity by refusing to effectively moderate its content.

Telegram has 800 million monthly active users, with more than two billion downloads, and generated $45 million in profits in 2023. Users can have secret chats, with messages stored on the device (rather than the cloud). Messages can be set to deconstruct.

Service providers can be held legally responsible for purposely allowing criminal activity on their platforms.