When a Russian technology entrepreneur blasts out a blanket message to millions of Telegram users in Spain warning them that their government is “pushing dangerous new regulations” and sliding toward a “surveillance state,” it is tempting to read it as a bold act of digital resistance. Free speech versus authoritarian overreach. Citizens versus power. David versus Goliath, but with servers. It is also, almost certainly, nonsense.
What we are witnessing is not a principled defense of internet freedom. It is a familiar political maneuver dressed up in libertarian cosplay, the strategic weaponization of “freedom” by powerful tech figures who resent regulation, fear accountability and have learned that far-right rhetoric travels fast, hits hard, and requires very little evidence.
The language is the tell. “Surveillance state.” “Under the guise of protection.” “Threaten your freedoms.” These phrases are not neutral warnings; they are ideological shortcuts. They are designed to bypass nuance and go straight for the gut. They flatten complex regulatory debates into a binary of good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny. And they mirror, almost word for word, the talking points pushed for years by far-right movements across Europe and the United States.
This is not an accident. It is a strategy. Spain, like the rest of the European Union, is attempting to regulate digital platforms that have grown so powerful they now rival states in their ability to shape public discourse, influence elections and profit from chaos. These regulations are messy, imperfect and open to criticism. But to frame them as the birth of Orwellian tyranny is not critique; it is intimidation.
The Russian tycoon’s message is not aimed at lawmakers. It is aimed at users, voters and fear. It seeks to mobilize public outrage against democratic institutions by presenting regulation as repression. In doing so, it echoes a playbook popularized by Elon Musk, cast yourself as the lone defender of free speech, paint governments as censorious monsters and quietly ignore the fact that you already wield extraordinary power over what people see, say and share.
The irony is staggering. These men do not oppose surveillance; they monetize it. Their platforms harvest data, track behavior, algorithmically shape attention and sell influence at industrial scale. They decide which voices are amplified and which are buried. They ban, throttle, shadow and promote with minimal transparency. Yet when elected governments attempt to impose rules, suddenly freedom is under existential threat.
This is not a clash between liberty and control. It is a turf war between democratic oversight and private empires.
The far-right framing is particularly revealing. By invoking the language of victimhood and cultural siege, tech oligarchs tap into a ready-made audience primed to distrust institutions, experts, and the idea of collective governance itself. The message is simple, you are being lied to, your freedoms are being stolen and only we can protect you. It is populism with a server farm.
There is also a geopolitical undertone that should not be ignored. A Russian billionaire accusing a European democracy of authoritarianism, while operating a platform that has long been criticized for hosting disinformation, extremist propaganda, and state-aligned narratives, is rich in hypocrisy. It reframes regulation as oppression while ignoring the very real harms that unregulated platforms have already caused.
None of this means governments should get a free pass. Regulation must be precise, transparent and fiercely contested. Civil liberties matter. Privacy matters. Free expression matters. But these debates deserve honesty, not scare tactics. They require journalists, lawmakers and citizens to argue in good faith, not to panic at the first billionaire who shouts “tyranny” into a push notification.
What is truly being threatened here is not internet freedom but unchecked power. The power to operate above the law. The power to profit without responsibility. The power to shape societies while answering to no one.
When tech moguls adopt far-right phraseology to rally users against democratic regulation, they are not defending freedom. They are defending themselves. And Europeans should be clear-eyed enough to recognize blackmail when it arrives disguised as a warning.
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