The Durov case and many other reasons are why companies avoid basing themselves in France. No Social Media platform will seek to headquarter in Paris. It’s unthinkable.
And the French government can’t go after Andrew Torba who runs GAB because he’s an American operating GAB in America. If GAB launches end to end encrypted chat or anything the Z French government doesn’t like, there’s nothing they can do about it.
The solution to “government overreach” is not building systems that can’t be cracked or stopped; they’re persecuting Durov without any proper cause. If your name is associated with a tool that the French government can’t stop or crack or track, they will come after you. This isn’t about right and wrong, following rules or logic.
This is not about technical capabilities or clever architecture, “frenz”; this is about computer illiterate tyrants who can’t understand detail or scale or ethics, and if they can, don’t care, because they want to sacrifice Durov to scare everyone.
The next iteration in this is to criminalise the authoring and distribution of unlicensed privacy software. The first part, distribution, will stop ordinary people from accessing Telegram or any tool that keeps messages private. This is easily done through Google Play and the Apple App Store. The second will totally dry up the developer pool of people working on privacy software, because none of them want any trouble. Oh, and GitHub will ban your repo, frenz.
Before you write “Hello World” in your new tool, you will need to have a Developer’s License before starting work, even in the conceptual stage. It will be illegal for you to share any design, algorithm or outline without both you and the idea recipient having a current Crypto Software Development License.
If you think this is completely impossible, please see Bernstein v. US Department of Justice https://medium.com/swlh/why-america-cant-regulate-bitcoin-8c77cee8d794
The answer to this is not “build your way out of it”, obviously.
The answer is to first curb the power of the state to persecute software development and distribution before you write “Hello World”. You do that by making the State smaller. You make the state smaller by instantiating sound money. That means globalising Bitcoin.
And how do you “globalise Bitcoin?”
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1…..
And in case you didn’t know, rote recitation of catchphrases and infantile feel good gibberish will not stop the persecution of Durov, remove KYC in Bitcoin or stop the emergence of Crypto Developer Licensing.
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Pavel Durov (@durov) on X
One year ago, the French police detained me for 4 days because some people I’d never heard of used Telegram to coordinate crimes. Arresting a CEO...
