The end of impunity for tech giants?

Tik Tok, Telegram and X are facing legal pushback that may signal a new era of accountability for social media titans.

- Alexander B. Howard

Three major events have shaken up the social media world in the past two weeks.

First, French authorities detained Pavel Durov, the iconoclastic billionaire behind the online platform Telegram. Then, a judge suspended the microblogging service X in Brazil.

Soon after, a US federal appeals court in Pennsylvania ruled that the mother of a 10-year-old child who died copying a TikTok self-asphyxiation video can sue the service, circumventing a blanket legal immunity the company has long claimed.

While each of these events took place in a different country with its own laws, together they demonstrate a sudden shift in the balance of power between governments and technology companies. We are nearer to the end of impunity for tech titans which have evaded accountability for the offline harms and societal disruptions wrought by the platforms that built their fabulous wealth.

In France, Durov was charged with complicity in enabling fraud and the distribution of drugs and child sexual abuse material on Telegram, as well as with failure to cooperate with law enforcement.

As research from Stanford showed in 2023, Telegram users are able to share and sell vile content, helped by a content moderation operation that is, to put it charitably, sparse.

While Durov's public statements venerate freedom of expression, framing himself, as other tech billionaires do, as a tribune of technology for the people, he built a business in part by providing a haven for criminals who profit from child abuse. And his company, compared with other tech giants, does relatively little to try to stop it.