Hello and I'm welcome to the spiked podcast I'm Fraser Myers and I'm delighted to be joined this week as ever by Spikes editor at Tom Slater and we also have spiked columnist Luke Gitos.

So we've got plenty to discuss today first of all telegram Facebook and the fight for free speech online,

the return of Islamist terror to Europe and why things won't be getting any better under

labour. better under labor. So the founder of telegram, Pavildurov was arrested last week.

This week he was given a long list of charges all connected to things that he is alleged to have allowed to happen on his app.

Tom, this is a completely unprecedented move. Normally, you know, it's taken as a given that apps like

WhatsApp or Facebook will unfortunately pay host to criminal activity and

never before has Mark Zuckerberg been arrested or Elon Musk been put in handcuffs.

This is quite an extraordinary move on the part of the French.

It definitely feels like a kind of escalation in the growing battle that we've been seeing

between the big tech companies and various governments,

particularly in Europe.

And as you say, just holding the CEO of a company to account, there's various charges, things in relation to terrorism, into relation to child exploitation,

basically saying that because these nefarious individuals use this tool in the same way they might use a telephone or an internet connection that therefore this

company and this individual Pavildurov is in some ways culpable for that is really alarming and I think

it's a sign of things to come really I think there's been a growing hostility

towards the social media companies particularly ones like telegram which prized themselves on being

basically as censorship free as is possible while still maintaining a reasonable business.

And there's a kind of sense of tightening of the screws.

I mean Macron has been very keen to present this as nothing to do with the government. of the

macron has been very keen to present this as nothing to do with the government he's obviously very keen to maintain

Paris's sort of status as a would-be hub for tech start-ups and so on,

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