Chris Pavlovski’s video hosting platform is embroiled in a long-running legal battle with French authorities
France crossed all borders in arresting Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, said Chris Pavlovski, CEO of video-sharing platform Rumble, adding that he left Europe after the news broke.
Durov was taken into custody at a Paris airport on Saturday night after arriving from Azerbaijan on a private jet. While French authorities have yet to publicly announce the reason for the Russian tech mogul’s detention, reports indicate that the charges relate to his alleged complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia crimes, fraud, as well as failure to address criminal activity in the messenger.
Telegram has denied any wrongdoing, adding that it is “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform.”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Pavlovski said he had “departed safely from Europe” after Durov’s arrest. He harshly criticized France’s move, saying that “crossed a red line” while noting that the country had already threatened the Rumble.
“Rumble will not tolerate this behavior and will use all legal means available to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right. We are currently fighting in the courts of France and hope for the immediate release of Pavel Durov,” he added.
Pavlovski’s platform, which has positioned itself as a free-speech alternative to YouTube, is embroiled in its own legal battle with French authorities. It began in November 2022 after authorities in Paris banned Rumble over its refusal to comply with a request to remove Russian media accounts blocked in the EU due to sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.
Although Durov’s arrest took place in France, several opinion leaders, including American entrepreneur David Sacks, have suggested that the US was behind the action. In April, Sacks also predicted that Washington could go after Telegram, X and eventually Rumble, given that the US passed a law that would ban video-sharing platform TikTok if its Chinese developer, ByteDance, refused to sell it within 12 months.
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