‘Instagram’s Child Exploitation’: Musk Fumes Over Telegram Founder’s Arrest, Asks Why

Elon Musk came out on Sunday in strong support of Telegram founder Pavel Durov after the Russian-born billionaire was detained in France. The arrest sparked global outrage on social media and was criticised as an attack on free speech.

The founder and owner of the popular encrypted messaging app Telegram was arrested at a French airport on Saturday over numerous charges related to his platform and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Since the news of Pavel’s arrest broke, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has posted several times on his social media platform to protest the arrest. Musk went so far as to attack Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting he should instead be arrested for the “massive child exploitation” problem on his Meta-owned Instagram.

‘Child exploitation problem’

“Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but no arrest for Zuck, as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data,” the X owner posted. In an earlier post, Musk said, “It is vital to the support of free speech that you forward X posts to people you know, especially in censorship-heavy countries.”

Musk and Zuckerberg have long been rivals, with a much-publicised “cage fight” once planned between them. However, the highly anticipated showdown was later called off. Musk’s attack on Zuckerberg came months after the Meta CEO apologized to the families of victims of online child sex abuse during a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill in February this year.

The billionaire entrepreneur told parents, “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.” “And this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer,” he added.

Earlier in May, Musk said that Zuckerberg-run Meta is “super greedy” at taking credit for advertisers who run campaigns on its platform. The X owner replied that “we are terrible at claiming credit, and Meta is super greedy at claiming credit.”

(With agency inputs)