Mike Rockwell’s Restaurant Analogy about Free Speech and Pavel Durov’s Arrest in France

Mike Rockwell on Telegram Founder’s Arrest →

Mike Rockwell, writing about Pavel Durov’s arrest, on his Initial Charge blog:

Why should we allow governments to force companies to moderate the content shared through their services? Why should we be treating speech online any differently than speech spoken in person?

Should restaurants be forced to moderate the speech of their patrons? Should they be forced by their government to install microphones at each table to ensure their customers aren’t sharing misinformation or engaging in illegal activity? Of course not.

Should customers be told that they are only allowed to speak in a restaurant if they do so in code? Of course not.

Mike’s Initial Charge is one of the few personal blogs that I read religious in my Reeder feed, so his restaurant analogy in this article quickly caught my eye. Mike compares governments forcing companies to moderate content shared on their platforms to a scenario where restaurants are forced to moderate what patrons talk about within their premises.

I have very little details about Pavel’s arrest, the charges against him, and what Telegram was actually doing, and thus have very little opinion about the whole thing. However, I paint a different picture of this analogy in my head.

Let’s say a particular restaurant gains popularity for illegal and nefarious activity happening within its premises. The restaurant starts becoming known as the goto place for bad things. Sure, it continues to offer good food and service to everyeone, but more and more bad actors start frequenting the restaurant and the word spreads that if you were looking for [whatever illegal], you’d find it here. Bad actors actively start using the restaurant to carry out their nefarious activities. If one mentions the restaurant’s name, the first thing people think of is not its food or service, but all that goes on otherwise. The government, too, hears about what goes down at the restaurant every day, and hence informs the restaurant owner that they should do something about it. May be the restaurant owner does something, or may be they don’t. But the illegal activities keep thriving, leading to many issues that affect people and corporations outside of the restaurant. In this case, should the government do anything about it?

I don’t think any governmental agency is worries about every messaging app out there. But once it becomes known for a particular kind of thing, they are bound to take actions.

I’ll admit, I don’t know if Telegram was actually resisting any government’s request or it was actively trying to not moderate content on its service. But I do believe that IF that was the case, Pavel’s arrest isn’t surprising. I also do think Free Speech should exist and it’s a critical component of the modern web. But Mike’s restaurant analogy, on its own, doesn’t really fit in a modern society and within the legal & ethical framework of a modern society.