[Music] in today's Spotlight French prosecutors have indicted the founder and CEO of telegram for allegedly allowing criminal activity on that messaging app authorities in France have spent days questioning Pavel durov over allegations that telegram is being used for illegal activities he was just released from police custody this morning but he's now facing up to 10 years in prison in France and more than $550,000 in fines he's also been barred from leaving France pending further investigation of this case prosecutors claim that this platform is functioning as a landing page for child sexual abuse material for drug trafficking fraud and abetting organized crime transactions durov is charged with a wide range of crimes including complicity and refusing to share information or documents with investigators when required to by law so let's bring in back the panel Mike Megan Trisha and Elie so Elie what do you make of this indictment to hold a top technology executive responsible for the actions of alleged bad s on the platform you know Terry and I was trying to get my head around the story and it was difficult for me to separate my American perspective from what the laws may be in France right so I'm not quite sure what the triggers are over there versus where they are over here but I do know and we all know that uh content uh creators as well as sites have struggle to try to maintain a healthy environment with their platforms and this seems like more of the same of that conversation absolutely and and you the French laws obviously differ from the American laws uh on First Amendment and other issues Megan this app has been on the radar of many governments for years telegrams group chats allow as many as 200,000 people and experts have been raising concerns that misinformation obviously can spread in those channels but also perhaps criminal activity so uh what are these apps like telegram will they change their models under this kind of pressure do you think look I think that a lot of you know just like LZ was saying we have very different standards here and I think a lot of our platforms have come into you know Mark Zuckerberg was just give a letter to the hill yesterday a couple of days ago um about their Community standards and their transparency with government so I I I don't know what the french laws are here but obviously if they are if he's breaking the law it sounds like he the law that he was breaking is wasn't providing the documents not necessarily some of the things that are alleging on the app so you know people should be held accountable but I think it is really hard with these platforms they go very far and wide cross countries cross continents very quickly so it's it's a challenging thing to sort of regulate yeah absolutely Trisha it is hard to protect people a government citizens in any of these countries from these you know International apps that that can be used for all of these purposes it sure is but I think it brings up a broader question of what is the personal culpability of any of these Tech CEOs or Executives when it comes to people violating their standards or the law I mean look at Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook uh the CEO of Google is he cable for for illegal action on Gmail or for that matter Elon Musk ATX I think an interesting tidbit of this also though is President MCR reportedly lobbied um pavl to actually move from Russia to France Telegram and then he ends up right behind bars pretty remarkable and and Mike this app is being used also in countries like Iran and elsewhere I've used it in Conflict zones where free speech is dangerous can be censored or can uh you know it's hard to get a hold of people they're afraid but this app does provide a lot of security of people believe for their own Communications if telegram were to shut down does that impact free speech and and the kind of communications people are using it for in those countries I think what this is going to teach the American public specifically as we look at these apps and tech companies is that we keep looking at it from a western POV or from an American POV uh but really all these tech companies had to be complicit and comply with different country's rules and regulations telegram specifically was created in order to allow citizens of authoritarian countries to be able to have ability uh to assemble and to discuss how they Fe freely away from authoritarian government and so I wouldn't say this necessarily setting a precedent on what to go forward uh but it does call into question how would this impact those citizens who live in authoritarian government countries uh the ability to have the freedom of speech uh and to go forward in that manner yeah it has made a big difference for a lot of people but now the founder under investigation Mike Megan Trisha and LZ thanks