One meta-note on the situation, is that in my timeline I have seen exactly zero non-western people defending Durov's arrest, but quite a few western people.

Definitely don't want to say that they don't exist (after all, my timeline is biased just like anyone's), just this is what my sample is so far.

IMO this is another example of the decoupling of liberalism and westernism that https://x.com/MacaesBruno often talks about.

People living in democracies view laws and the judiciary as more legitimate than people living in dictatorships?

Perhaps when people perceive that there are broad freedoms, people get less guarded about some authoritarianism directed at the fringes...

Freelance data engineer | Backend and data engineering for Spotify, Candy Crush, helped build SF-based appsec startup | Building web3gains.com | saarw.twitter

This is what I saw happened personally with regard to the Canadian trucker rally during Covid that was co-opted by some fringe groups, giving legitimacy to government authoritarian action to shut it down and setting a dangerous precedent regarding the ability to protest in Canada without fear of loss of banking access and or arrest via a fringe legal act called the Emergency Measures Act. People legitimized this relative cavalier use of this safety valve of an act because the media attention was directed heavily at those fringes that showed up and so was the government talking to legitimize their choice which was convenient.