Founder and CEO of Telegram Pavel Durov delivers a keynote speech during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 23, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)

Founder and CEO of the popular messaging app, Telegram, Pavel Durov, has criticized the European Union (EU) for targeting platforms that refuse to censor free speech.

The Franco-Russian billionaire, 41, said EU regulators are unfairly targeting social media platforms that allow dissenting or critical speech.

He was responding to a 2024 post by Elon Musk, the owner of X, who said that the European Commission had offered the popular social media platform a secret deal to avoid fines in return for censoring certain statements.

However, EU regulators on Friday fined Musk`s X platform €120 million ($140 million) for failing to comply with their regulations.

The European Commission said it was punishing X, previously known as Twitter, following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc`s Digital Services Act, also known as the DSA.

Durov, who was arrested in France last year over censorship issues framed as Telegram`s failure to take action to curb the criminal use of the messaging app, said the EU imposes impossible rules on tech companies as a way to control and punish those who do not comply with their secret demands.

"The EU imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech," Durov wrote on X on Saturday.

Later on Saturday, Durov wrote: "The EU exclusively targets platforms that host inconvenient or dissenting speech (Telegram, X, TikTok...). Platforms that algorithmically silence people are left largely untouched, despite far more serious illegal content issues."

He said his politically-motivated 2024 detention in France aimed to coerce him into censorship of non-Western media, in particular, the platform`s coverage of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

At that time, Durov revealed, he had been approached by the head of France`s Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), who asked him to "ban conservative voices in Romania" ahead of an election.

Durov said the DGSE chief even offered to introduce intelligence agents that could help him with his court case if Telegram quietly removed channels tied to Moldova`s election.

However, French officials have denied the discourse.

Durov said that his arrest and imprisonment in Paris, followed by the court charges lodged against him, pursued an ulterior motive, which was to exert pressure on him, forcing the tech guru into imposing censorship on Telegram.

Durov and Musk have both faced pressure from EU regulators under DSA, which came into force in 2023. The law requires platforms to remove illegal content quickly, though activists say it is used to suppress lawful expression.