I still find the reactions to the Telegram situation with Durov’s arrest odd. There are no doubt all sorts of politics surrounding it, but even putting all that aside for a moment, the assertion that a platform provider should not be held accountable for moderating content on the platform is just nuts. As I say in this week’s video, there’s lots of content that you can put in the “grey” bucket (free speech versus hate speech, for example) and there are valid arguments to be had there. But there’s also a bunch of content on Telegram that’s not even close to grey, it’s the outright illegal recalcitrant stuff that there must be accountability for when you’re running the platform that allows people to publish this content. This goes well beyond direct interpersonal communication on genuine E2E encrypted platforms like Signal (or the terrible analogy of Telegram somehow being “just like AT&T”), and the current situation in France really shouldn’t be that surprising. More in this week’s video:
References
- Sponsored by: 1Password Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device.
- Telegram’s CEO got himself arrested in France (but it’s the assertion that he can’t be held responsible for controlling abuse on the platform that got people really riled up)
- Neville and the pain that is procurement departments (also kinda funny how many people came out and said “yeah, we’ve got a Neville too”)
- It’s the HIBP North America tour! (we’ll be back in the US and Canada in only a few weeks from now)