Everywhere you look in the democratic world, there are signs of a change in attitudes toward technology companies. Starting with the United States. In April, the country passed a law to ban TikTok if the company remains under the control of a Chinese company. The bill didn’t stop there. It granted the president the power to ban platforms controlled by companies linked to foreign adversaries, provided they have a 20% stake.
TikTok’s parent company has filed a lawsuit to challenge the law, based on the First Amendment of the US Constitution (free speech) and the Fifth Amendment (taking without just compensation). The lawsuit is ongoing and so far the company has not obtained a ruling capable of stopping the application of the law. If nothing changes, the app could be banned in the US starting January 19, 2025.
In France, Telegram’s president, Pavel Durov, was arrested on August 24. The accusation is that Telegram facilitates illegal activities and does not cooperate with authorities.
Telegram is an old acquaintance of ours. In Brazil, it is used to sell data for scams. On the platform, you can pay around R$10 to find out someone’s full name, parents, siblings, ID numbers, address, cell phone number, company shares, vehicles and a full copy of documents. If you know anyone who has been scammed online, this is where many of them come from.
However, this type of crime is small potatoes compared to others on Telegram, which has managed to make the “dark web” accessible to everyone. If before, to use the “dark web” you had to use apps and heavy encryption, on Telegram this is no longer necessary. The platform is home to pedophilia, drug sales, weapons sales, terrorism, all out in the open.
When authorities in countries as diverse as Germany, the United Kingdom or France tried to curb these crimes, Telegram did everything it could to make things difficult: it ignored court orders, requests for information, or requests to take down the crimes.
It’s like someone who owns a hotel. But all kinds of illegal activities happen in the hotel. The owner knows about it, but does everything he can to prevent the police from investigating or acting on the crimes there.
Durov himself is a curious figure. He has a collection of nationalities, including French citizenship, acquired in 2021. He claims to have more than 100 children around the world. He is a follower of the ideology of “spread the memes and the genes”. Telegram is apparently a toy for him. Leaked documents indicate that the platform lost 173 million dollars in 2023. The idea was to make money with a cryptocurrency integrated into the platform, Toncoin.
After his arrest, Telegram changed its stance. It announced that it would invest heavily in content moderation and created reporting channels available across the platform. The bottom line is simple: crimes are not part of freedom of expression.
It was – intelligence seen as a faculty that is only human
It is already – using the acronym AGI (artificial general intelligence) for superintelligence
Coming soon – using the acronym AMI (advance machine intelligence) for superintelligence
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