BREAKING: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov arrested by French authorities.

Early official comments to French media suggest this follows from France's displeasure with Telegram's moderation & compliance with official requests(?).

If so, I'm pretty sure this is an unprecedented action by a government against a large platform's CEO.

Arrests of employees of big platforms over moderation & access are rare.

For example, folks may recall a 2016 case where Brazil arrested a VP at Facebook for refusing to provide Brazilian police with access to That said, it seems to me that threats to arrest platforms' staff over moderation & official cooperation fights are increasing, especially from governments in some big markets.