Tech entrepreneur John Matze said the arrest of Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov is "an existential threat to free speech" that could have global ramifications and set dangerous precedents that put freedoms at risk. 

"This should be a huge story. It's part of the ongoing war on privacy and free speech, globally," Matze told Fox News Digital. 

Matze pointed out that privacy is both a constitutional right for all Americans and a basic human right, and encryption and the ability to communicate with large groups of people should be included. 

"This is a very significant threat to both privacy and free speech," Matze said.  

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Durov was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday as part of a sweeping investigation opened earlier this year. French prosecutors alleged that he allowed criminal activity on the messaging app, and judges ordered him to pay 5 million euros bail. Durov is barred from leaving France pending further investigation. 

Allegations against Durov, who is also a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.

The first preliminary charge against him was for ''complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group,'' a crime that can lead to sentences of up to 10 years in prison and a 500,000-euro fine, the prosecutor's office said.

Matze believes Durov, who fled Russia in 2014 after refusing to cave to the Kremlin’s censorship demands at his previous company, was targeted by the French government because he "typically does not cooperate with requests from governments for information." 

Matze co-founded Parler in 2018, and the platform became popular among free speech enthusiasts until it was shut down for failing to moderate "egregious content." He has since launched Hedgehog, a community "built for everyday Americans to get the biggest news of the day and have quality discussion about it," and remains a staunch defender of free speech. 

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"In 2021, my company was deplatformed and taken offline as a result of accusations regarding content moderation, which were untrue. Here we're seeing a repeat of these circumstances with what's happening to Telegram, where a very reactionary group of people is putting pressure to both censor content and eradicate privacy from his platform," Matze said. 

"I'm passionate about this," he continued. "Do social media founders and do social media company owners have legal liability? And should they be responsible for what people are doing on their platform, to the extent that the accusations are saying that they should be?"

Telegram, which reported 700 million monthly users in 2023, uses both artificial intelligence and human moderators to oversee public channels and groups. It is wildly popular in India, where 100 million users reside, and it is used by fewer than 10% of people in France. 

"This is important because in the developing world, and in places where there are current conflicts or war zones, there are features in Telegram that let you send broadcast messages out to a large audience of people. You can think of it like sending a message out on a social media feed," Matze said. 

"What that does is, in conflict zones or places where free speech isn't respected and people are trying to really fight for their lives," he added. "People are able to get information out really fast to a large group of people and do it mostly unmoderated and without the risk of the local governments, in these regions, being told who these individuals are that are fighting for their freedom and lives."

French authorities opened a preliminary probe of Telegram in February in response to ''the near total absence of a response by Telegram to judicial requests" for data for pursuing suspects, notably those accused of crimes against children, the prosecutor's office said.

In addition to being outraged over Durov’s arrest, Matze also believes it points to widespread hypocrisy in the way different messaging platforms are treated. 

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"There is a movement in the West where countries are getting more and more aggressive with their hate speech laws and other laws which require more censorship. And so, what's really strange about this case and is really unique is that they're making accusations that there is criminal activity on the platform and that he should be liable for it," Matze said, noting that Meta-owned competitor WhatsApp has significantly more users.

Matze said the same accusation that Durov used encryption without a license is not only bogus and hypocritical, but also sets a terrifying precedent. 

"Saying that cryptography is now illegal is pretty scary because all of these platforms have some sort of cryptography, and in particular, WhatsApp and Facebook products do have end-to-end encryption. So that is pretty frightening," he said. 

Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz contributed to this report.

Vice President Kamala Harris' interview drought finally ended Thursday, but after 40 days as the presumptive and now official Democratic nominee for president, she has yet to hold an official press conference.

Under pressure to sit down for a substantive interview after weeks of stonewalling, she agreed to a sit-down with CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday in Georgia, joined by running mate Tim Walz.

Harris defended some of her noted policy flip-flops on issues like fracking and immigration, saying her "values" hadn't changed. She was also pressed on whether she had regrets about defending President Biden's mental acuity after his debate, given he dropped out of the race less than a month later. She also said she wanted to "turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies."

Bash pointed out Harris had been vice president for three-and-a-half of those years, but Harris countered she meant moving on from this "era," seemingly referring to the political rise of Donald Trump that began in 2015.

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Following Harris’ first sit-down interview, NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, who is known for her glowing Biden-Harris coverage, appeared unimpressed. 

"Harris keeps saying ‘my values haven’t changed’ while not explaining why her positions have changed," Alcindor wrote. 

As to when she'll do a formal press conference, that day may never come.

"You will not see one press conference from her in the next 75 days until Election Day," Fox News contributor Joe Concha predicted earlier this month.

NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck feels the vice president "obviously owes it to the American people to hold free-wheeling press conferences where reporters can, unlike what happened tonight with CNN's Dana Bash, ask follow-up questions."

"For every softball from, say, ABC or NPR, you'll hope a liberal journalist will show some courage to do the right thing," Houck told Fox News Digital. 

"The interview itself had a positive atmosphere. From the get-go in the hype video-like opening by Bash, CNN put forward a perception that this was an event, not a grinding fact-finding mission," Houck continued. "She missed a litany of topics with Harris. Allowing death row inmates to vote, closing ICE, defunding the police, ending private insurance, girl's sports, the filibuster, Jussie Smollett, the Minneapolis bail fund, systemic racism… those were just a few of the areas she could have touched on."

Former President Trump has sought to highlight the contrast in media availability between the two, sitting for several lengthy interviews in recent weeks and also holding a pair of press conferences.

Harris received mixed reviews for her showing on Thursday with Bash, where she took the majority of the questions but nevertheless had Walz there for support.

One point that received praise from liberals was her pointed dismissal of a question about Trump's suggestion that she didn't embrace being Black until adulthood. Calling attacks around race from Trump a tired "playbook," she told Bash to move on to the next question.

But conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings said the Trump campaign should be "salivating" over one of the revelations from the interview, which appeared to be her embrace of so-called "Bidenomics."

"She is making it clear that she will embrace and be a continuation of Biden's economic policy — his record — what they've done," he said. "She offered no remorse, no regrets, no introspection about anything they've done."

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By doing the interview, Harris met the bar she set three weeks ago that she wanted to schedule one by the end of the month. Whether pressure will grow for her to do more, and also her first solo interview as a candidate, remains to be seen.

"My fear is, because Bash wasn't like, say, CBS's Steve Kroft or NPR's Steve Inskeep salivating at the sight of Barack Obama, the liberal media will claim this and the upcoming ABC debate are sufficient interview time for the campaign," Houck said.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.