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Censorship Industrial Complex

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s Arrest Is Part of a Global War on Free Speech

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9 minute read

From The Rattler 

By J.D. Tuccille

Governments around the world seek to suppress ideas and control communications channels

It’s appropriate that, days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov’s arrest, then, stands as less of a one-off than as part of a concerted effort by governments, including those of nominally free countries, to control speech.

“Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov is expected to appear in court Sunday after being arrested by French police at an airport near Paris for alleged offences related to his popular messaging app,” reported France24.

separate story noted claims by Paris prosecutors that he was detained for “running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud, as well as the refusal to communicate information to authorities, money laundering and providing cryptographic services to criminals.”

Freedom for Everybody or for Nobody

Durov’s alleged crime is offering encrypted communications services to everybody, including those who engage in illegality or just anger the powers that be. But secure communications are a feature, not a bug, for most people who live in a world in which “global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023,” according to Freedom House. Fighting authoritarian regimes requires means of exchanging information that are resistant to penetration by various repressive police agencies.

“Telegram, and other encrypted messaging services, are crucial for those intending to organize protests in countries where there is a severe crackdown on free speech. Myanmar, Belarus and Hong Kong have all seen people relying on the services,” Index on Censorship noted in 2021.

And if bad people occasionally use encrypted apps such as Telegram, they use phones and postal services, too. The qualities that make communications systems useful to those battling authoritarianism are also helpful to those with less benign intentions. There’s no way to offer security to one group without offering it to everybody.

Durov’s Second Clash With an Authoritarian Government

A CNN report on the case (I watch so you don’t have to) weirdly linked Durov to Russian President Vladimir Putin, insinuating the two are conspiring. But as Reuters helpfully points out, “Telegram, based in Dubai, was founded by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has sold.”

The Internet Archive contains links to 2014 posts by Durov boasting, in Russian, that he refused to surrender information about Ukrainian users of VKontakte to the Putin regime and balked at barring the late Alexei Navalny’s opposition group from the service.

“I’m afraid there is no going back,” Durov told TechCrunch after leaving Russia to build Telegram. “Not after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities. They can’t stand me.”

Telegram was initially blocked in Russia, but the ban was unpopular and unsuccessful, and soon dropped. The service is now widely used by both Russians and Ukrainians as a digital battleground in their war.

Given that Telegram was founded by a free speech champion who fled his home country after refusing to monitor and censor speech for the authorities, it’s very easy to suspect that Pavel Durov has run afoul of authoritarians operating under a different flag, no matter the protestations of French President Emmanuel Macron that the arrest “is in no way a political decision” and that France “is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication.”

This is the same Macron, after all, who last year, after riots he insisted were coordinated online, huffed “We have to think about the social networks, about the bans we’ll have to put in place. When things get out of control, we might need to be able to regulate or cut them off.”

More recently, free speech groups objected to European Union threats to censor political content on X—specifically, an interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The U.S. Has Its Own Free Speech Concerns

Matters are better in the United States, but not so much (as we have every right to demand). The Twitter Files and the Facebook Files revealed serious pressure brought to bear by the U.S. government on social media companies to stifle dissenting views and inconvenient (to the political class) news stories. If any further confirmation was needed, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on August 26 regretting the company’s role in succumbing to pressure to censor content.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg wrote to Chairman Jim Jordan (R–Ohio). “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

Zuckerberg also admitted to suppressing reports about the incriminating contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop at the FBI’s behest. “We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he promised.

Fighting a Free Speech Recession

Durov’s arrest isn’t an isolated incident. It comes amid what Jacob Mchangama, (founder of the Danish think tank Justitia and executive director of The Future of Free Speech) calls “a free speech recession.” He warns that “liberal democracies, rather than constituting a counterweight to the authoritarian onslaught, are themselves contributing to the free-speech recession.”

“Recession” might be too soft a word to describe a phenomenon that has governments attempting to suppress ideas and arresting entrepreneurs who operate neutral communications channels. These are harsh policies with real costs in terms of human freedom.

Telegram didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in a public statement said, “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

In a post from March, Pavel Durov himself commented, “All large social media apps are easy targets for criticism due to the content they host.” He vowed, “we shall solve any potential challenges the same way we do everything else — with efficiency, innovation and respect for privacy and freedom of speech.”

Durov’s arrest shows that he, like all champions of free expression, must wage their battles for liberty against the active opposition of government officials even in nominally free countries. Free speech is as important as ever, but more besieged than it has been in a long time.

Here are a few more good articles about liberty:

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Australian woman fired, dragged before tribunal for saying only women can breastfeed

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From LifeSiteNews

By David James

Sussex argued that males who take drugs to lactate should not be experimenting on children, describing it is a “dangerous fetish.”

In yet another blow to free speech in Australia, Jasmine Sussex, a Victorian breastfeeding expert, is being taken to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal for saying that only females can breastfeed their babies.

Sussex argued that males who take drugs to lactate should not be experimenting on children, describing it is a “dangerous fetish.”

Her tweets about an Australian male breastfeeding his infant with a cocktail of lactose-inducing drugs was removed by X (formerly Twitter) for Australian users, although it remained visible to overseas users. The move came after requests from a “government entity or law enforcement agency”, according to Twitter. Sussex was told she had “broken the law” although it was not made clear what law that was.

Sussex was also sacked from the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) for refusing to use gender neutral language. She is one of seven counsellors to be formally investigated by the ABA leadership and one of five to be sacked.

The complaint against Sussex is being brought by Queenslander Jennifer Buckley in Queensland’s Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Buckley was born male and later identified as a woman and “transitioned.” Buckley acted after a transgender parent complained to the Queensland Human Rights Commission.

Buckley reportedly biologically fathered a baby through IVF and is raising the child with his wife. He posted on social media about taking hormones to grow breasts, explaining: “For the past six weeks I have been taking a drug called domperidone to increase prolactin in an attempt to be able to produce breast milk so that I can have the experience of breastfeeding.”

The case is not just about suppressing a person’s right to say what most would consider to be a statement of the obvious. It raises fundamental questions about how the law is to be crafted and applied.

A legal system depends on clear semantics, the definition of words. The potential confusion that can be created by not having a clear understanding of a person’s sex was exposed in the hearing for US Supreme Court applicant Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Asked to define what a “woman” is, Jackson replied: “I can’t,” adding that she was not a biologist.

This definitional problem has been cynically fudged by mixing up the words “gender” and “sex.” It is claimed that there are 72 genders, by implication turning the question of physical sex into a matter of identity and personal psychology. There are presumably only two sexes.

That is the kind of rhetorical move made by Buckley, who said Sussex’s comments were “hurtful” because he was looking to have “the experience of breastfeeding.” This is analogous to saying that gender differences should be reduced to matters of personal perception, not observable physical characteristics.

In that sense, Sussex and Buckley are talking past each other; the words they use do not have the same meaning. Sussex is saying that objectively only “women” can lactate naturally. It is true that with drug assistance it is possible for “men” to mimic breast feeding to a limited degree. But that is artificial. It is not natural breast feeding. Sussex, who is an experienced consultant on breast feeding, also warns there may be medical issues with “male” breastfeeding that need further examination.

Buckley is arguing that her/his personal experience (of breastfeeding) is what matters and that anyone who questions that is infringing on his rights. He wants to be understood as a “woman” who was a “man”, although he reportedly still possesses male characteristics, such as being able to father a child. This is possible because he feels that way, it is how he “identifies”. But the fact that he has to undergo drug treatment indicates that in a physical sense he is a “man”.

In law, there is always a preference for physical evidence over what people say they are thinking or feeling. The latter is often changeable and difficult to demonstrate; it is poor quality evidence. There should also be an insistence on having an unambiguous understanding of the meaning of words.

On that basis Sussex, who is being represented by the Human Rights Law Alliance, should be able to defend herself effectively. But there is little reason to have confidence in the Australian legal system. It has shown itself to be highly susceptible to politics. The bullying of people who say things once thought to be self-evident may yet continue.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Elon Musk slams woke Los Angeles Times for questioning ‘morality’ of having children

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

‘Extinctionists want a holocaust for all of humanity,’ Elon Musk warned after the far-left Los Angeles Times questioned whether it is ‘right’ to have children.

Pro-free speech tech mogul Elon Musk slammed a woke news outlet for shaming parents for having children.

In a September 14 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk condemned the Los Angeles Times for degrading those who wish to bring children into the world over the claim that doing so may increase “climate change.”

“Extinctionists want a holocaust for all of humanity,” Musk declared.

The post was in response to a September 11 article by the Los Angeles Times titled “It’s almost shameful to want to have children.”

The article, written by a professor of “gender and sexuality studies,” questions the morality of having children, considering the current political and “climate” situation.

“American society feels more socially and politically polarized than ever. Is it right to bring another person into that?” it questioned, suggesting that it would be better not to exist than to live in a society with social tension.

READ: Nobel Prize winner denounces alarmist climate predictions: ‘I don’t believe there is a climate crisis’

The author interviewed seven young people, who the author claimed, “have more climate change knowledge than most people do.” Out of the seven, five did not want to have biological children, while the two who were unsure struggled “with whether it’s morally OK to have children.”

The article’s anti-life message is becoming increasingly commonplace among leftists and reflects the plans lain out by the World Economic Forum to radically reduce the world’s population.

While some climate activists have promoted the idea that the world’s population must be restrained in order to sustain its existing people, numerous studies debunk that claim as well as claims that the earth can only hold 8 billion people or fewer.

Musk has been a longtime advocate for higher birth rates, warning that a “collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.”

In 2022, Elon Musk, pointed out that America’s total fertility rate has been below replacement for approximately a half-century.

An August report found that the U.S. fertility rate reached a historic low in 2023, with fewer Americans are having children than ever before, a trend that experts have warned could lead to societal collapse.

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