This is John Batcher, a conversation with Judy Dempsey in Berlin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,

looking at France arresting the founder of Telegram, a very popular social media site, especially in Russia, but throughout

Europe arresting him because he's part French citizen. Judy explains this is not immediately obvious to

anyone from the outside. It may be about prisoner exchange or it may be about

something I had no idea was going on.

Anti-digital France, Anti-digital Europe.

Her duty to explain what may be true in the detention of a billionaire who is responsible for a

site that is very popular and holding him possibly accountable for the content of the site.

In America we regard this as censorship but then again there are examples of exactly this sort of thing, bending the social media

sites to obey.

Zuckerberg in the White House and COVID is an immediate example in the news.

There is duty to Dempsey to explain what's going on in Europe about digital affairs.

More of this tonight.

That's a big issue.

I mean, trans under President Emmanuel Macron has just completely changes policy towards Russia and it's so pro-Ukraine at the moment.

But this is a very interesting case about the arrest of Pavl-Durev.

He's the founder of the Telegraph social network.

And so in Europe, maybe this feeling that Europe is trying to prepare for the next prisoner exchange, but Macron just tried to didn't discuss this at all last night in a discussion.

He said he was defending the independence of the French judiciary well let's

see what that means but it's so complicated for us for Europeans and for the Americans.

And the most likely explanation of what happened is that the Europe led by France has gone

further than we ever thought in its fight against all things digital.

...