Telegram, a Stylish French Dog Collar, and Mom Saying, “Pavel Clean Up Your Room!”
June 4, 2025
Just a dinobaby operating without AI. What do you expect? A free newsletter and an old geezer. Do those statements sound like dorky detritus?
Pavel Durov has a problem with France. The country’s judiciary let him go back home after an eight month stay-cation. However, Mr. Durov is not the type of person to enjoy having a ring in his nose and a long strand of red tape connecting him to his new mom back in Paris. Pavel wants to live an Airbnb life, but he has to find a way to get his French mom to say, “Okay, Pavel, you can go out with your friends but you have to be home by 9 pm Paris time.” If he does not comply, Mr. Durov is learning that the French government can make life miserable: There’s the monitoring. There’s the red tape. There’s the reminder that France has some wonderful prison facilities in France, North Africa, and Guiana (like where’s that, Pavel?). But worst of all, Mr. Durov does not have his beloved freedom.
He learned this when he blew off a French request to block certain content from Telegram into Romania. For details, click here. What happened?
The first reminder was a jerk on his stylish French when the 40 year old was told, “Pavel, you cannot go to the US.” The write up “France Denies Telegram Founder Pavel Durov’s Request to Visit US” reported on May 22, 2025:
France has denied a request by Telegram founder Pavel Durov to travel to the United States for talks with investment funds, prosecutors…
For an advocate of “freedom,” Mr. Durov has just been told, “Pavel, go to your room.”
Mr. Durov, a young-at-heart 40 year old with oodles of loving children, wanted to travel from Dubai to Oslo, Norway. The reason was for Mr. Durov to travel to a conference about freedom. The French, those often viewed as people who certify chickens for quality, told Mr. Durov, “Pavel, you are grounded. Go back to your room and clean it up.”
Then another sharp pull and in public, causing the digital poodle to yelp. The Human Rights Foundation’s PR team published “French Courts Block Telegram Founder Pavel from Attending Oslo Freedom Forum.” That write up explained:
A French court has denied Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s request to travel to Norway in order to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum on Tuesday, May 27. Durov had been invited to speak at the global gathering of activists, hosted annually by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), on the topic of free speech, surveillance, and digital rights.
I interpret this decision by the French judiciary as making clear to Pavel Durov that he is not “free” and that he may be at risk of being sent to a summer camp in one of France’s salubrious facilities for those who don’t like to follow the rules. He is a French citizen, and I assume that he is learning that being allowed to leave France is not a get-out-of-jail free card. I would suggest that not even his brother, the fellow with two PhDs or his colleagues in his “core” engineering team can come up with what I call the “French problem.” My hunch is that these very intelligent people have considered that the French might expand their scope of interest to include the legal entities for Telegram and the “gee, it is not part of our operation” TON Foundation, its executives, and their ancillary business interests. The French did produce some nifty math about probabilities, and I have a hunch that the probability of the French judiciary fuzzifying the boundary between Pavel Durov and these other individuals is creeping up… quickly.
Pavel Durov is on a bureaucratic leash. The French judiciary have jerked Mr. Durov’s neck twice and quite publicly.
The question becomes, “What’s Mr. Durov going to do?” The fellow has a French collar with a leasch connecting him to the savvy French judiciary?
Allow this dinobaby to offer several observations:
- He will talk with his lawyers Kaminski and learn that France’s legal and police system does indeed have an interest in high-quality chickens as well as a prime specimen like Pavel Durov. In short, that fowl will be watched, probed, and groomed. Mr. Durov is experiencing how those ducks, geese, and chickens on French farms live before the creatures find themselves in a pot after plucking and plucking forcefully.
- Mr. Durov will continue to tidy Telegram to the standards of cleanliness enforced at the French Foreign Legion training headquarters. He is making progress on the money laundering front. He is cleaning up pointers to adult and other interesting Telegram content which has had 13 years to plant roots and support a veritable forest of allegedly illegal products and services. More effort is likely to be needed. Did I mention that dog crates are used to punish trainees who don’t get the bed making and ironing up to snuff? The crates are located in front of the drill field to make it easy for fellow trainees to see who has created the extra duties for the squad. It can be warm near Marseille for dog crates exposed to the elements.
- The competition is beginning to become visible. The charming Mark Zuckerberg, the delightful Elon Musk, and the life-of-the-AI-party Sam Altman are accelerating their efforts to release an everything application with some Telegram “features.” One thing is certain, a Pavel Durov does not have the scope or “freedom” of operation he had before his fateful trip to Paris in August 2024. Innovation at Telegram seems to be confined to “gifts” and STARS. Exciting stuff as TONcoin disappoints
Net net: Pavel Durov faces some headwinds, and these are not the gusts blasting up and down the narrow streets of Dubai, the US, or Norway. He has a big wind machine planted in front of his handsome visage and the blades are not rotating at full speed. Will France crank up the RPMs, Pavel? Do goose livers swell under certain conditions? Yep, a lot.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2025
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