Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Wednesday joined fellow tech tycoon Elon Musk in slamming Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez over his “dangerous” plan to ban social media for under-16s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Socialist leader announced a series of measures in Dubai on Tuesday to protect Spanish minors from harmful social media content such as violence and pornography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As well as the ban, Sanchez pledged to change Spanish law to make the chief executives of tech platforms “face criminal liability for failing to remove illegal or hateful content”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Durov spoke of “dangerous new regulations that threaten your internet freedoms” in a Wednesday post on his Telegram messaging app, which has an estimated billion users and is known for its privacy features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“These measures could turn Spain into a surveillance state under the guise of ‘protection’,” he wrote, saying mass data collection and censorship would result from their enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sanchez responded on X with his own spin on a quote attributed to Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century classic novel “Don Quixote” that embraces criticism as a sign of doing the right thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Let the techno-oligarchs bark, Sancho, it’s a sign that we are riding,” Sanchez wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spanish government sources said Durov had used his “unrestricted control” of Telegram to send a message full of “lies and illegitimate attacks” to all Spanish users of the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This demonstrated “the urgent need to regulate social media and mobile messaging apps”, the sources said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk reacted to Sanchez’s announcement with a string of posts on his social media platform X on Tuesday, calling him “dirty”, a “tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain” and “the true fascist totalitarian”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SpaceX and Tesla boss had already been embroiled in a public spat with Sanchez over his government’s regularisation of hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spain’s move to ban social media for under-16s came after Australia became the first country to introduce such a measure in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
France, Greece and Denmark have been leading a push for similar steps in the European Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Wednesday joined fellow tech tycoon Elon Musk in slamming Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez over his “dangerous” plan to ban social media for under-16s. The Socialist leader announced a series of measures in Dubai on Tuesday to protect Spanish minors from harmful social media content such as violence and pornography. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":86438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7993],"tags":[12465,14439,14438,14389],"class_list":["post-86437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-elon-musk-2","tag-pavel-durov","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-social-media"],"yoast_head":"\n