> If, however, the French are simply saying that Durov’s failure to police his users or respond promptly to French document requests is the crime (which I suspect is the case), then this represents a dramatic escalation in the online censorship wars. What it means is that European states are going to try to extraterritorially dictate to foreign companies what content those companies can and cannot host on foreign-based webservers.
This completely ignores that the amount of criminal activity on Telegram in Europe as well as parts of Asia in itself has been escalating. The author is coming at this from a US-based point of view, which is fine, but unless you're particularly interested in the topic it's difficult for Americans to be aware of the scale of Telegram's role in criminality elsewhere, as this does not seem to be the case in the US. Maybe someone here knows why Telegram is not as core to organized crime in the US, and what communication methods are used there. But it's clear that in Europe and parts of Asia, its role is massive, and has been growing and growing without a limit in sight. This is easy to underestimate.
In these parts of the world, the scale of it is of a completely different magnitude than criminal activity on e.g. Facebook, which the author brings up but is a misguided comparison. And that's ignoring the relative percentages of legit vs criminal activity, which are inverted (if not worse) between the two platforms, because that's not as important.
Scale and absolute numbers, the absolute detrimental effect on society, matter.
I don't see this as an escalation because there was always going to be a line somewhere. A line where the amount of criminal activity on a platform, which when crossed , was going to cause arrests. Telegram's continuous growth in this aspect means that the line has now been crossed.
And in reality, this line exists anywhere even in the US. It might be higher, but it's still there. The idea of not having such a line is clearly insane - that would mean no matter if something completely destroys society, we're going to let it pass. Such lines are almost never enshrined in law, for obvious reasons. They only become visible to everyone as they are crossed.
If I open telegram and go to ‘find people nearby’ I am presented with a long list of drug dealers and prostitutes advertising their services. So they not only help with communication, they help with advertising, and since this is all public, they can’t really say they’re not aware
This completely ignores that the amount of criminal activity on Telegram in Europe as well as parts of Asia in itself has been escalating. The author is coming at this from a US-based point of view, which is fine, but unless you're particularly interested in the topic it's difficult for Americans to be aware of the scale of Telegram's role in criminality elsewhere, as this does not seem to be the case in the US. Maybe someone here knows why Telegram is not as core to organized crime in the US, and what communication methods are used there. But it's clear that in Europe and parts of Asia, its role is massive, and has been growing and growing without a limit in sight. This is easy to underestimate.
In these parts of the world, the scale of it is of a completely different magnitude than criminal activity on e.g. Facebook, which the author brings up but is a misguided comparison. And that's ignoring the relative percentages of legit vs criminal activity, which are inverted (if not worse) between the two platforms, because that's not as important.
Scale and absolute numbers, the absolute detrimental effect on society, matter.
I don't see this as an escalation because there was always going to be a line somewhere. A line where the amount of criminal activity on a platform, which when crossed , was going to cause arrests. Telegram's continuous growth in this aspect means that the line has now been crossed.
And in reality, this line exists anywhere even in the US. It might be higher, but it's still there. The idea of not having such a line is clearly insane - that would mean no matter if something completely destroys society, we're going to let it pass. Such lines are almost never enshrined in law, for obvious reasons. They only become visible to everyone as they are crossed.