[smt88]

Russian govt officials are protesting his arrest.

When an authoritarian govt is calling for the release of someone who runs a "private" messenger, it suggests they have a back door. Otherwise they tend to oppose all private messaging.

[kombine]

No, there is no logical link between the two events. Russian govt can protest that for propaganda reasons: to make a point that Western governments are restricting freedom of speech.

[sweeter]

They're hitting that Uno Reverse card. Tbf, the US does a LOT of the stuff that we openly criticize Russia and China for. Which, I would hope that people have enough insight to recognize that this is a bad thing across the board. The only people who get hurt and face consequences from this kind of a thing are the citizens.

[averageRoyalty]

This is a key perspective people fail to take into account. We've been conditioned by movies, books etc to think everyone fits into these black and white "good and bad" categories.

Most western countries do horrific things we do not find acceptable, but when we do find out we hand wave it away because they're the "good guys".

[azinman2]

Can always count on HN for whataboutism.

Good thing it’s legal to say so in the countries that dominate its user base.

[celdon25]

They don't tend to care until large enough quantities of people start listening despite whatever filters (i.e. de-ranking social media posts) and countermeasures (i.e. cable news assets) are put in place before it gets to that point. Then they very likely have the ability to label it as misinformation and find a legal reason to prosecute under a number of broad categories: https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/false-informatio...

It came very close to this during Covid, and maybe once or twice since then.

You're free to say what you want, and everyone is free to ignore you if what you say doesn't jive with "common sense".

[miohtama]

Durov was robbed from his previous startup at a gunpoint by Putin’s thugs, and then he had to escape, so it is unlikely Durov co-operates with Russia:

https://x.com/moo9000/status/1827651335476461813

[JetSpiegel]

https://twitter.com/AmbRusFrance/status/1827628382617481284

Well the embassy is complaining about this arrest, so maybe that's just counter-intelligence.

[redthnb]

That's just the half of the story and Pavel isn't an innocent victim

[petre]

So what's the full story then?

[kennedywm]

No. What would be illogical is to assume that because Russia might be motivated to protest for the sake of propaganda, that it is not also, or instead, motivated by not wanting to lose access to a hypothetical backdoor.

[dawnerd]

Russia was also using it for “secret” chats and are probably terrified what could be exposed.

[Nux]

Or they want to make it seem as such..