Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities this week on charges including complicity in drug trafficking and facilitating the spread of child sexual abuse material, as part of a broader investigation into illegal activities on the messaging platform.

Durov's arrest is the "most dramatic action to date" in the "global fight between officials and tech companies over limits to harmful content", said The Washington Post, and "reignites a fierce debate" over free speech on social media platforms.

What exactly is Telegram?
Telegram offers user-to-user private messaging and also broadcast channels – where users can send messages to large groups of people, similar to social media accounts.

Telegram markets itself as a secure messaging platform, but unlike WhatsApp and Signal, it only offers end-to-end encryption in its "secret chat" feature. So Telegram "doesn't have the same safety that its peers do" when it comes to authorities' requests for data, said The Guardian.

Why is Telegram so controversial?
Telegram has "allegedly enabled some truly shocking crimes", including coordinating Islamic State attacks in Paris and Berlin, said Vox. On the other hand, Telegram's "secret chat" is an "extremely useful" tool for political dissidents and journalists in repressive regimes.

But critics counter that the app "acts as a magnet for the lawless", said the Financial Times, "for disinformation pushers, conspiracy theorists and extremists" who are increasingly restricted on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Telegram's "anything-goes approach to moderation" means it has also become a "megaphone" for groups such as IS and Hamas.

What's next for Telegram and other platforms?
Telegram is just one of several platforms criticised for poor moderation and failing to combat child abuse content, disinformation and extremist material.

One "worrisome outcome" of France's possible prosecution of Telegram is that it could "embolden countries around the world to prosecute platform CEOs criminally for failing to turn over user data", said Platformer.

But at the same time, Telegram "really does seem to be actively enabling a staggering amount of abuse". While it's alarming to see state power used to snoop on private conversations, it's equally troubling to see a private company "declare itself to be above the law".

A competition format used in chess known as the "Swiss model" will be introduced for this season's Uefa Champions League football tournament.

The new-look draw, to be held in Monaco this evening, has already kicked off furious debate: some say the "high-stakes experiment" offers "more excitement", said Nick Ames in The Guardian, but others "feel it serves the interests of Super League rebels".

Brave new world
From its launch as the European Cup in 1955 until 1991, the tournament had a simple knockout format. A group phase was then introduced, and the competition was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992.

From this season, the format is switching to the "Swiss model", which has been used in chess, croquet, bridge and Scrabble. The group stage is being replaced by a league structure and the number of participating clubs has been increased from 32 to 36.

Every club will play a minimum of eight league stage games against eight different opponents (four home games, four away). To determine the eight opponents, the teams will initially be ranked in four seeding pots for this evening's draw.

Clubs that finish the league phase in first to eighth places will automatically go on to the 16-club knockout phase, and the clubs that finish in ninth to 24th places will enter a two-legged play-off, with the winners proceeding to the 16-club knockout.

More big games, less jeopardy
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said the new format would mean "greater fairness, excitement, intensity, emotion and uncertainty". But not everyone is convinced. Football's "greatest virtue is its simplicity", said Miguel Delaney in The Independent, but that "certainly isn't how you'd describe this new Champions League", which is "in essence, almost a full European season now running alongside the domestic season".

"Boredom" is guaranteed, said Thom Gibbs in The Telegraph, as "qualifiers are settled long before the eighth round of fixtures". And "all for what?" – a "witless expansion which looks alarmingly like the Super League entering via the backdoor, surrounded by bouncers".

Edinburgh playwright Harry Mould's "entertaining" debut work, "The Brenda Line", is inspired by a "curious historical detail", said Mark Fisher in The Guardian.

Between 1972 and 1987, the Samaritans set up a service run by female volunteers ("Brendas") to answer obscene helpline calls from "telephone masturbators". Mould's mother saw the service at first hand while volunteering for the charity in north Wales as a young woman – and it's her experience that sparked the idea for this "sparky two-hander".

Set in a small Scottish town at a Samaritans two-desk call centre, the action follows long-serving volunteer Anne (Fiona Bruce) and the youngest, newest member of the team, Karen (Charlotte Grayson), who has recently arrived from London and "fizzes with feminist zeal".

Bruce and Grayson are "tremendously engaging" in the starring roles, said Mark Brown in The Telegraph, and Natalie Fern's "simple yet effective" set is "assiduously evocative" of the late 1970s with its colourful rotary-dial phones and desk lamps.

Mould's script "sparks with laugh-out-loud humour that belies the piece's subject matter", and the disagreement between the two women is portrayed in a way that is both "engrossing and unerringly plausible". Perhaps a "gentler" drama than you might expect given the subject matter, the production by director Ben Occhipinti is "nicely paced and balanced".

It's a "confident and adventurous debut" that "warmly and amusingly touches on alienation" while avoiding "moral judgement", said David Pollock in The Stage.

"The Brenda Line" is at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 18 September, then at Traverse, Edinburgh, 13–16 November

Robert F Kennedy Jr and the end of the party
Freddie Hayward for The New Statesman
Intense fear over what is at stake in November's presidential election is "recasting traditional party lines" in the US, writes Freddie Hayward. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr has endorsed Donald Trump, whose own former press secretary is backing Kamala Harris "because she loves her country more than her party". This election has been characterised by "pervasive existential angst" about America's direction, and "for some, it is so profound that it surpasses long-held partisan loyalties".

Germany Can't Afford to Turn Its Back on Migrants
Chris Bryant for Bloomberg
Germany's "increasing public discomfort with immigration" is at odds with the reality that "the nation's future prosperity depends on attracting millions of economic migrants", writes Chris Bryant. With its working age population on course to "shrink by 8 million" by 2050, "encouraging skilled migration" is the only way to make up the shortfall. But with German voters now ranking restrictions on immigration as "more important than fighting poverty", this "balancing act is looking increasingly tricky".

With its foolish smoking ban Labour will see its supposed growth agenda go up in smoke
The Sun editorial board
Labour's "incendiary" plans to ban smoking in outdoor spaces will "put a match to its ­supposed growth agenda and see it go up in smoke", says The Sun. The move would be a "death knell" for the nation's already ailing pubs and is based on health concerns over "a whiff of second-hand smoke" that are "utterly spurious". That the proposed changes would also include vaping "the most effective anti-smoking pastime ever, shows how absurd it is".