>>144757,
>>144758The “Mackey model” above refers to the case of Douglass Mackey, an American citizen who was arrested, tried, and convicted of a felony for distributing memes mocking Hillary Clinton in 2016. If the regime is less able to use disinformation as a censorship pretext to pressure Twitter to deplatform users, Mackey’s case represents a thus-far successful attempt (the case is currently on appeal) to codify much of the disinformation scam into criminal law. Furthermore, Durov’s arrest might be best understood as a complement to the Mackey model. If Mackey’s arrest represents the regime’s willingness to attack and arrest citizens for unapproved speech, Durov’s arrest represents Western governments’ increasing willingness to arrest censorship-resistant tech CEOs for not playing ball like the regime lackeys that used to control Big Tech exclusively.
The dangerous precedent of the Durov arrest has elicited strong condemnation from Edward Snowden to Elon Musk.
Indeed, it’s hard not to view Durov’s arrest as a trial balloon for an imminent legal offensive on Musk, who has enraged EU authorities by refusing to cater to the censorship demands of the EU and US security establishment.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X is in breach of the European Union’s online content law, according to preliminary findings by regulators that could lead to hefty fines for the company.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-member bloc, announced on Friday that the social media platform is violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to “dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.”
The disgraced Alexander Vindman, notorious Russia-hoax impeachment operative, has made this explicit.
Apart from its relevance to free speech per se, the Durov case is also relevant to geopolitics. Indeed, Telegram is especially known for hosting a rich repository of unmediated footage from hot-button conflict zones such as Ukraine and Gaza. Telegram’s willingness to host such unmediated, unfiltered information about geopolitical hotspots could very well have put them in the crosshairs of a variety of nation states, including Israel (the leak of whose government files was published on a telegram channel), the Ukraine, and stakeholders in the Ukraine war such as the USA or France (footage confirming direct US and Western involvement in Ukraine has circulated on telegram for some time now). Indeed, just two months ago, the Atlantic Council’s “disinformation censorship” arm, DFR Lab, put out a video singling out Telegram for criticism. Two months later, Durov was arrested in France. Funny how that works!
The Atlantic Council, by the way, is funded by both the US Government and various Ukrainian oligarchs.
The larger geopolitical context of Durov’s arrest is perhaps the most interesting. Despite US regime propaganda trying to pin Durov as a Russian agent, Durov in fact lived as a Russian exile and was starkly at odds with the Russian government, precisely because he wouldn’t compromise Telegram’s privacy on behalf of Russia’s demands.
Durov’s life in UAE, which has staked out something of a neutral role in the US-Russia conflict as a geopolitical Switzerland, can be seen as an experimental attempt to live a life as a functionally stateless, neutral tech oligarch who shows neither fear nor favor to any of the multiple intelligence agencies approaching him. Durov’s recent arrest shows the limitations of this approach and seems to underscore that once one reaches a certain level in things, neutrality is impossible, and there is no escaping the great geopolitical/censorship chess game taking place for the highest stakes imaginable.We hope we are wrong on this last point and will continue to follow this case with tremendous interest.
https://revolver.news/2024/08/atlantic-council-us-government-funded-censorship-arm-targets-telegram-just-two-months-before-durov-arrest/