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00:00Well, there are more questions than answers at this stage about the arrest of Durov.
00:05And to shed some light on this story, I'm pleased to be joined on the programme now by Dr Melanie
00:11Garson. She works on cyber policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and at University
00:18College London. Good afternoon to you. Thanks for joining us. Good afternoon.
00:23What is your understanding, first of all, of why Durov has been arrested? Because the Kremlin,
00:29for one, is saying they don't know. Yeah, there's not a lot of information out
00:36there. We know that often the new French agency that was set up in November has arrested him,
00:42and it's on the basis of content moderation violations. Likely, you know, they've been
00:49different opinions, some with extremist content, some that is exploitation of minor content.
00:55But that is the most that we know. There's not been a clear statement issued of exactly
01:01what it is. Well, it's worth saying, though, that Telegram has issued a statement saying that it
01:06does abide by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act on moderation. They've said as well
01:12that Durov has nothing to hide. But given that it seems that there was a possibility he was
01:18arrested, it does beg the question, why he touched down in France at all?
01:23It is a really good question. And a lot of people are, again, if you go to Telegram and you go to
01:32some of the hacktivist forums, of course, there's the conspiracy theories. Is he going to give some
01:37information? It could be that he wants to engage and wipe the slate clean. We do know that Telegram
01:44does engage in moderation policies. I believe in April they issued a statement where they removed
01:49about 66,000 accounts associated with particular exploitation of minors. So, although there's a lot
01:56of content in there, it's not actually a forum that's free entirely of any moderation.
02:02Well, let's talk a little bit about how the platform operates, because it's not an app that
02:07everybody might be familiar with, but it is enormous, isn't it? It's got something like
02:11900 million users every month. It operates quite differently to messaging apps like WhatsApp.
02:19It's popular with journalists, but it's also popular with extremists of all kinds of different
02:25flavours. Why would you say the platform is so attractive and so popular with particular groups
02:33of people? Yes, it's had an interesting rise and actually it's had a meteoric rise since the
02:41Russian invasion of Ukraine. And that was particularly because content was pushed out of
02:47some of the normal social media networks, which led to this massive evolution of Telegram being
02:56used. And so, let's just take from the Russian side, for instance, from 16 billion views in 2021
03:02for some of the top Russian channels, we're talking about up to 109 billion views by 2023.
03:08So, that's a stratospheric rise. And it's been used by both legitimate and illegitimate channels
03:14as well. So, it's a bit of a love-to-hate relationship, because in the sense that
03:20legitimate news networks and able to get information into Russia have also been using
03:26it as an alternative source. But at the same time, as you've noticed, we've got
03:31hacktivists, we've got private military company groups using it, as well as those state-based
03:38influences both across news networks and other ways that today that conflicts have become both
03:44physical and digital. So, there's a digital battlefield to every single physical conflict.
03:50You talk about a digital battlefield, particularly, of course, in the context of the Russia-Ukraine
03:54war, where it is used extensively Telegram. It's associated, of course, with the spread
03:59of information on these channels. Is it also used to spread disinformation, fake news?
04:08Absolutely. And it's used to amplify misinformation. And it does have not great sort of box sets as
04:16well, slightly different from the other types of box routine across other information channels
04:21that can act. We've seen different types of patient networks, use of different kinds of
04:37communication being amplified, including conspiracy theories, including all the whole range of
04:43information space. What kind of impact do you think derives
04:49particularly if it continues, perhaps if he's charged, will have on how the app is used in
04:56places like Ukraine and in Russia? It will be really interesting. I mean,
05:03there's been a big backlash saying that this does limit free speech. And it will be, as I said,
05:10it is a double-edged sword, because it's given us also incredible insights to what's going on
05:16within the conflict, particularly, as you said, for journalists, for academic research people,
05:21to be able to reach beyond it. As is the case with any situation, if it's not Telegram,
05:28we'll see a shift to other messaging networks that might be even harder to access things like
05:33Signal, possibly, whether it's Discord, but there will always be a clever entrepreneur and even
05:41clever malicious user that will find a different mechanism by which to communicate.
05:47Dr. Melanie Garson, great to get your perspective. Thanks very much.