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    Telegram’s Top Executive Pavel Durov Reportedly Detained in France

    The founder of Telegram, an app with more than 900 million users, was taken into custody by the authorities, French media reported.The French authorities on Saturday detained Pavel Durov, the top executive of the online communications platform Telegram, on charges related to the spread of illicit material on the service, according to French news reports.Mr. Durov, 39, a Russian-born entrepreneur, was reportedly arrested at Le Bourget Airport near Paris after landing from Azerbaijan. His detention could not immediately be confirmed.The Russian Embassy in France said in a statement on Sunday that it had asked the French authorities for clarification on news of the arrest.Representatives of the French police and Interior Ministry declined to comment and redirected questions to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The Paris prosecutor’s office, citing an open investigation, also declined to comment.Telegram did not respond to requests for comment.In an interview on Telegram, George Lobushkin, a former press secretary for Mr. Durov who remains close to him, wrote, “This is a monstrous attack on freedom of speech worldwide.”Telegram, with more than 900 million users, has long been on the radar of law enforcement agencies around the world because terrorist organizations, drug runners, weapons dealers and far-right extremist groups have used it for communicating, recruiting and organizing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men

    This box represents a real photo of a 9-year-old girl in a golden bikini lounging on a towel. The photo was posted on her Instagram account, which is run by adults. 1 🔥🔥🔥 wooowww Mama mia ❤️❤️🥰💯🤗 Great body😍🔥❤️ Love 😍😍😍😍 Perfect bikini body ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😋😋😋😍😍😍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Mmmmmmmmm take that bikini off 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ You’re sooooo hot ❤️🤗💋🌺🌹🌹💯 […] More

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    Five Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Child Influencers

    Instagram does not allow children under 13 to have accounts, but parents are allowed to run them — and many do so for daughters who aspire to be social media influencers.What often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children, an investigation by The New York Times found.Thousands of so-called mom-run accounts examined by The Times offer disturbing insights into how social media is reshaping childhood, especially for girls, with direct parental encouragement and involvement.Nearly one in three preteens list influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers. But health and technology experts have recently cautioned that social media presents a “profound risk of harm” for girls. Constant comparisons to their peers and face-altering filters are driving negative feelings of self-worth and promoting objectification of their bodies, researchers found.The pursuit of online fame, particularly through Instagram, has supercharged the often toxic phenomenon, The Times found, encouraging parents to commodify their daughter’s images. These are some key findings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Russia’s Unsupported ‘Dirty Bomb’ Claims Spread Through Right-Wing U.S. Media

    After Russia claimed that Ukraine would use a “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that can spread radioactive material — on its own territory, Western countries reacted with skepticism, noting that Russia often accused others of doing what Moscow was considering doing itself. Russia provided no evidence to support its claim.But on right-wing media and in many right-wing communities online, Russia’s claim was portrayed as believable, and as a dire warning that could serve to escalate Russia’s war on Ukraine for Ukraine’s benefit, or even trigger a new world war.Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist who often spreads lies on his Infowars platform, during his online show on Monday suggested that Ukraine would detonate a dirty bomb within its borders and then blame Russia as “a pretext to bring NATO fully into the conflict” and start World War III. “My analysis is, about 90 percent at this point, that there’s going to be full-on public war with Russia, and at least a tactical nuclear war in Europe,” he added.The Gateway Pundit, another right-wing American news site, repeated Russia’s claims in an article on Sunday and asked: “Would this surprise anyone?”And on YouTube, Gonzalo Lira, an American commentator who lives in Ukraine, said that “all the evidence” pointed to a “deliberate provocation that is being staged by the Americans.” The video received more than 59,000 views and circulated through right-wing social media.America’s far right has repeatedly sided with Russia in the conflict, echoing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia’s baseless claims that the war was about routing corruption in Ukraine or ending neo-Nazism.As the conflict has continued, online communities have interpreted developments through their own conspiratorial lens, picking up Russian narratives that Ukraine would bomb its own citizens to curry international sympathy.Those discussions continued this week regarding claims about the possible use of a dirty bomb in the conflict.In one video — circulated widely on the messaging app Telegram and seen more than 36,000 times on the video-streaming service Brighteon — a streamer suggested that a “cabal” of Democrats and leftists was plotting to use the dirty bomb to set off a nuclear war, which would prevent Republicans from winning the midterm elections.“The cabal is so desperate, obviously, that they can’t allow that to happen,” the host said. “And even if it does happen, they’ll probably try to push for war before the next Congress gets in.” More