Telegram founder Pavel Durov marked his 41st birthday by publishing a post on his channel dedicated to the threats to freedom of speech on the Internet. At first glance, the issue he raises does seem serious and as relevant as ever. And the beginning of the post sounds fine enough: “What was once the promise of the free exchange of information is being turned into the ultimate tool of control,” Durov writes.
However, the examples he provides are, to put it mildly, extremely one-sided: “Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures such as digital IDs (UK), online age checks (Australia), and mass scanning of private messages (EU). Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy”.
Firstly, Durov for some reason decided to remain silent about the context behind the decisions taken by the authorities in the UK and Australia. Secondly, when speaking about Germany, the UK, and France, the Telegram founder uses one of propagandists’ favorite tricks — a sweeping generalization without providing any examples. No names, no statistics, no references to documents — exactly the way Russian bots write on social media. Including, by the way, on Telegram itself.
At the same time, Durov makes no mention of prison terms for online comments in Russia and Belarus, of digital totalitarianism in China, or of the total control in North Korea and many other realities of life in states outside the so-called “collective West.” Apparently, he forgot to.
Against this background, the continuation of the post seems particularly striking: “A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast — while we’re asleep. Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms — and allowed them to be taken away”.
Durov doesn’t seem at all concerned by the fact that in some parts of our planet this dystopian world has already arrived — and that some of his fellow citizens have hardly ever experienced freedom at all. It is, after all, his own country of origin that is using freedom of speech to undermine democracy and human rights in the West. And Western governments are introducing new regulations partly to ensure that Russian influence operations can no longer be carried out as freely and massively as they are today.
That is why posts like this are a perfect illustration of how Russian propaganda works — shifting attention away from the core problem to its side effects, exaggerating isolated facts and phenomena, and making sweeping generalizations to create a distorted picture of what is happening in a particular country or region.
