🎙 A week ago, Tucker Carlson published an interview with me about what happened in France. It was covered by media in many countries — except, interestingly, in France. 🤐
📰 The French media hasn’t lost interest in Telegram. Last week, Le Monde, the country’s main newspaper, invited its readers to report whether they watch pirated football matches on Telegram. This attempt to crowdsource a negative story about us is a part of a broader strategy.
In just the 7 weeks following my arrest in Paris, Le Monde published 40 negative articles about Telegram. In violation of journalistic ethics, they did not ask us for a comment in 37 of these 40 articles and always ignored the factual corrections we sent them. 🤦♂️
📣 Such a media environment is alarming. This is why platforms like Telegram are so important — we enable people to access all points of view and decide for themselves. We believe people are smart and can be trusted with the unfiltered truth. ✊
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Last month, France nearly banned encryption. A law requiring messaging apps to implement a backdoor for police access to private messages was passed by the Senate. Luckily, it was shot down by the National Assembly. Yet 3 days ago the Paris Police Prefect advocated for it again.
The members of the National Assembly were wise to reject a law that would have made France the first country in the world to strip its citizens of their right to privacy. Even countries that many Europeans view as lacking in freedoms have never banned encryption. Why?
Because it’s technically impossible to guarantee that only the police can access a backdoor. Once introduced, a backdoor can be exploited by other parties — from foreign agents to hackers. As a result, the private messages of all law abiding citizens can get compromised.
The blockchain industry was built on the promise of decentralization, but ended up being concentrated in the hands of a few who began to abuse their power.
The solution is clear: blockchain-based projects should go back to their roots – decentralization. Cryptocurrency users should switch to trustless transactions and self-hosted wallets.
We, developers, should steer the blockchain industry away from centralization by building fast and easy-to-use decentralized applications for the masses. Such projects are finally feasible today.