Opinion

Israel aims to control the social media sphere by any means necessary, even through abduction

September 27, 2024 

Telegram logo is displayed on a number of screens in London, England on August 26, 2024 [Leon Neal/Getty Images]

by Muhammad Hussein


In this modern digitised age, unregulated freedom of speech is a rarity, as much as it is a fashion for conservatives and political commentators to advocate for it. So when Pavel Durov, the CEO of the Telegram app, was arrested by French authorities in August, a flurry of theories emerged regarding the causes and reasons for his fate.

French and international media reported that Durov had failed to adequately take action to curb criminal use of his platform, with France’s OFMIN – a government agency tasked with preventing violence against minors – having issued an arrest warrant due to a preliminary investigation based on allegations that Telegram harbours numerous criminal offences including fraud, drug trafficking, cyber-bullying, organised crime and the promotion of terrorism.

Many around the world were rightly sceptical of those claims, however, and understandably so, as how does a platform go about gaining full control of what its users post or discuss? It is almost impossible for other messaging and social media sites to do so, either. Facebook, for example, cannot go about identifying and deleting all scams on its marketplace page, Whatsapp – although also under Meta – cannot reasonably be expected to flag all chats pertaining to criminal activity, nor can LinkedIn hunt down fake or scandalous job listings.

But government and law enforcement agencies do not expect them to do such things, only simply to allow them to gain access to the private data and activities of the platforms’ users if and when deemed ‘necessary’. Telegram was apparently not willing to give that privacy up, making it a lot of enemies amongst key state actors throughout the world.

Like all prominent platforms in all prominent fields, government authorities aim to dominate and impose their control over them in an indirect way in order to gain backdoor access to their data, profiles and users’ private messages and conversations. The common reason given for such access is, of course, the claim that it would hugely assist counter-terrorism surveillance and operations.

Not only do authorities monitor through that access, but they also attempt to intervene in the platforms’ processes and influence their output and their users’ views.

The most known example of this was the exploitation of Twitter – now X – by American intelligence agencies, with Elon Musk’s revelations of the ‘Twitter files’ two years ago having proven that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) had suppressed certain reports regarding President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and their dealings in matters such as Ukraine and China.

Read: Elon Musk’s Twitter Files are cleaning house, but what other secrets remain?

The files also revealed the social media site’s creation of secret blacklists of Conservative or right-wing figures, in a direct attempt to censor them and their prominent views including the criticism of Covid-19 lockdowns and measures, as well as the platform’s suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account at the time.

In implementing those policies, Twitter staff and leading figures had even met with FBI officials on a frequent basis, along with officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Those meetings were not simply for reports or updates, but notably allowed those intelligence agencies to have a direct say in what Twitter could and could not allow on its site, wielding direct pressure on the platform’s policies and moderation, and potentially even meddling in the US elections.

Thus was the US federal government and its agencies exposed for picking sides and attempting to acquire further sway over the political system. And, since then, a model was presented to the world on how other Western authorities – as well as authorities in other regions throughout the wider international community – can gain access to and control over social media and messaging platforms.

Telegram is one of the few social media or messaging platforms in which security is ingrained into its very architecture, with its servers distributed across multiple territories and different jurisdictions, making it difficult for authorities to target any single government or location.




Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram in San Francisco, California on September 21, 2015 [Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch]By arresting Durov, the theory goes, French authorities were attempting to apply pressure on the Telegram boss to at least loosen restrictions on governments’ gaining of access to the platform’s databases – and that seems to have worked. Earlier this month, following Durov’s release, Telegram reportedly quietly updated its FAQs, removing a key sentence which previously stated that “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them.”

The arrest of Durov and the subsequent pressure to reduce Telegram’s restrictions are thought by some to be the result of the platform’s recent angering of Israel and its security services. The app has frustrated many players throughout the course of its rise, but it may have apparently taken it a step too far by earning the scorn of Tel Aviv.

Not only was a Telegram channel responsible for significant leaks of the personal life and data of the chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency two years ago, but a channel was also responsible, as recently as a few months ago, for hacking into the Israeli Justice Ministry, leaking tens of thousands of classified documents and sensitive emails.

A report by Israeli news outlet, Haaretz, has only confirmed that frustration by Tel Aviv at Telegram’s lack of sufficient cooperation, especially since the start of its ongoing invasion of Gaza, when Hamas and its supporters spread material further propagating the Resistance group’s tactics and tenacity.

According to the report, those concerns pushed Israelis in the high-tech industry to attempt to contact the UAE-based Durov in late 2023, but he was reportedly largely unreceptive to the private requests to enhance moderation and suppression on his platform.

Read: Meta announces removal of content targeting Zionists in significant anti-Palestinian policy change

The tech boss’s lack of compliance, therefore, seemed to give Israel no choice but to force its hand, potentially requesting an allied state such as France – one that Durov frequents and is a citizen of – to apply pressure on him.

Then there is the theory of Durov being closely followed by an alleged Mossad agent up until the time of his arrest, in the form of 24-year-old Yuli Vavilova, a Dubai-based Russian crypto-coach who had accompanied the Telegram founder on his trips prior to landing in Paris, avidly posting their locations on social media like most influencers do.

Following Durov’s arrest, she was reported to have mysteriously ‘disappeared’, although she remains active on social media, which led to speculation that she may have been placed as a ‘honey trap’ by intelligence agencies, chief amongst them Israel’s Mossad. For now, that remains just that – speculation – and she has since claimed in a recent Instagram post that there is “a lot of false information circulating, but that’s a topic for the future”.

What can be said for now is that Durov’s arrest and the targeting of his platform’s moderation standards were effectively an abduction for the purpose of extortion, not of money but of something more precious to governments and their security services: data, unhindered access and guarantees of compliance.

And, by all means, Israel and its concerns or wishes seemed to have at least some involvement and leverage in bringing that about, so shaking Durov that he announced only days ago greater moderation and a new crackdown on illegal content shared on Telegram.

It is reminiscent of when X’s Elon Musk dared to take on the pro-Israel lobby and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) just over a year ago, before being bashed by the lobby’s immense power and dragged first to Israel for a tour of the Kibbutz at the centre of Hamas’s 7 October attack, and then to the Auschwitz concentration camp in January this year.

After being beaten into submission, the great free speech advocate, who was once heralded as a man daring to face down suppression, now no longer dares not to express views in contradiction to the pro-Israel and Zionist lobby.

Such is the extent of its reach and power, and it is with this that Telegram and any other remaining social media platforms must bow to the will of Tel Aviv and its allies, heralding in an era of an even greater global crackdown on freedom of speech.