Not to justify the arrest, but to give some context in the Telegram CEO getting arrested, there are people using it as a market place for CSAM (child porn).
Understanding how and why they shutdown platforms and protocols is important to understand.
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/addressing-distribution-illicit-sexual-content-minors-online
Preventing child porn, terrorism or any major crime is not the goal of this arrest. Actually States do very little to prevent this type of crimes. They should start within their own structures. In this way any messenger app or social media that won't comply with corrupt, power hungry governments will be shut down.
There is also this:
We know it’s a pretext but that doesn’t mean understanding the pretext is without value.
Nothing against understanding the pretext but this is a political move dressed as anti child porn control. Platforms like Meta and even Twitter have bigger issues related to this problem and nothing is being done. So yes..a pretext but a dangerous one.
The other platforms conform to the ineffectual state requested controls. Telegram choose to neither do e2e encryption nor check for the most basic CSAM known content. The state has endless tolerance for ineffective compliance, but cracks down on direct confrontation.
I see it as State attacking those they have interest in attacking and not those actually crossing the red line. It's time to call it what it is : attack on freedom of speech and communication in cyber age. This is the front at which State is loosing control rapidly. Zuck is compromised so they won't touch him even when child porn is a well known issue on his platform.
