Telegram CEO criticized France after the X search

“French police searched X’s office in Paris. France is the only country in the world that criminally prosecutes all social networks that give users a certain level of freedom (Telegram, X, TikTok…),” Durov wrote on X on February 3 and received more than 4.5 million views. “Make no mistake: this is not a free country.”

On February 3, French prosecutors searched the X office in Paris as part of an investigation that began in January 2025, accusing the platform’s algorithm of being used to interfere in French politics. The issue was expanded to include suspicions that the Grok AI tool spread content denying the Holocaust, as well as pornographic content created with deepfake.

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office also sent summons to Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino for voluntary questioning on April 20 in Paris, because they were the de facto and legal operators respectively at the time of the investigation. Ms. Yaccarino resigned as CEO X in July 2025, after two years in the position.

Previously, Durov also criticized the French government, accusing President Emmanuel Macron of “trying to silence” online criticism and likening it to a concentrated forced labor camp.

Durov, a 42-year-old billionaire, currently lives in Dubai. He became famous in 2006 when he founded VK, a social network like Russia’s Facebook, before founding Telegram in 2013.

However, for many years, Telegram has been criticized as a place for spreading extremist information. The company said it has blocked more than 42 million groups and channels that violated its terms of operation, and provided Internet address data in a number of terrorism and criminal investigation cases.

Durov himself once faced a major legal challenge in Europe when French officials accused Telegram’s censorship policy of creating conditions for criminal activity to develop. He was arrested in France in 2024, then released but still under supervision.