The cagey and multifarious founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, is known for being a programming prodigy, a billionaire entrepreneur, and a stalwart promoter of free speech. Recently remanded in custody by France, Durov’s abstruse lifestyle mimics Mark Zuckerberg’s appetite for innovation and creativity, Jack Dorsey’s eccentric habits, and Elon Musk’s republican streak. Similar to Musk, Durov has also championed pronatalism, with claims stating that he has fathered more than 100 children through sperm donations. With his net worth amounting to an estimated $9.15 billion and his aim to safeguard the freedom of communication from government interference, Durov continues to live a life without borders as he owns an array of passports and residences. However, his current legal troubles have triggered the re-awakening of debates over Telegram’s end-to-end encryption, which shields the communication between users from even the company’s employees. This has sparked security concerns among various governments. The European Union, which attempts to regulate big tech, has also put an eye on this issue.
Nikolai Durov and Pavel Durov
Born in 1984 in the Soviet Union, Pavel Durov later moved to Italy when he was only four. Following the crumble of the Soviet Union, Pavel’s family returned to their homeland-Russia, where his father joined St. Petersburg State University. Both Pavel and his older brother, Nikolai, were mathematics prodigies from an early age. On Italian TV, Nikolai gained recognition as a young prodigy solving cubic equations in real-time, alongside winning repeated gold medals for his participation in the International Math Olympiad. Pavel excelled at academics, becoming the top scorer at his school. He competed in various local mathematics contests. “We were both very passionate about coding and designing stuff,” Durov said. Speaking of his childhood, Durov also mentioned how while returning to Russia, the family brought back an IBM PC XT computer from Italy, stating that they were “in the early 90s, one of the few families in Russia who could actually teach ourselves how to program.”
VKontakte: the Russian Facebook with 70 million active users
In 2006, a 21-year-old fresh graduate Pavel Durov launched VKontakte (VK)- a social media site which in no time became famous among the Russians as the ‘Facebook of Russia’, making Durov the Russian counterpart to Mark Zuckerberg. However, unlike Mark Zuckerberg’s eventual conflicts with the U.S. authorities, Durov’s VK faced quick and several backlashes from the Kremlin. When in 2013, the social media site VK was being used by protesters to organize demonstrations in Kyiv against Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Durov rejected sharing users’ private data with the Kremlin after the official seat of the Government of Russia demanded it. “We decided to refuse, and that didn’t go too well with the Russian government,” Durov told Carlson. This non-compliance resulted in a tense relationship with the Russian government. This led Durov to resign as the CEO of VK as he sold his shares in the company. Now VK is under state control. Durov has since emphasized that his goal has always been personal freedom and helping others achieve it, expressing a strong desire to remain independent and not answer to anyone.
When Mark Zuckerberg took possession of WhatsApp to expand Meta’s social media empire, Durov brought a new messaging app to the market which was already saturated with such platforms. Durov believed that the existing apps did not serve the purpose. He stated in 2015, “It doesn’t matter how many messaging apps are out there if all of them suck.” Durov’s experience with the Kremlin drove him to create this new messaging platform that would be entirely secure from government surveillance. Millions of users were attracted to Telegram, which is now based in Dubai and promises robust end-to-end encryption and commitment to privacy.
Terrorists who planned the Paris terror attacks in November 2015 used Telegram as a platform for the conduction. This put a permanent black stain on the messaging platform and led Durov to shoulder a public relations campaign to address concerns. In an interview with CNN< Durov expressed that the primary aim behind the design of Telegram was to provide a highly secure platform of communication between users and that creating government access would damage the app’s integrity and the company’s commitment to user data privacy. He explained, “You cannot make it safe against criminals and open for governments. It’s either secure or not secure.”
Telegram’s staunch refusal to follow decryption demands has led the company to face several conflicts with governments worldwide, with an initial clash with Russia. In 2018, Moscow attempted to ban Telegram for not providing decryption keys to Russian security services. Durov was determined to oppose the ban. The ban was lifted in 2020.
Telegram remains one of the few foreign social media platforms to thrive in Russia. Now Telegram is being widely used by Russian officials. Critics have questioned whether Telegram’s unimpeded operation in Russia signifies some form of compromise with the Kremlin, allegations Durov denies, citing his previous conflicts with Russia as proof of his independence.
Recently, Durov was taken into custody in Paris when Russian President Vladimir Putin was paying a visit to Azerbaijan. Claims state that Durov and Putin didn’t meet. Despite this, The Russian Government was the first to intervene on Durov’s behalf, while the Russian Embassy in Paris started taking swift action.
Allegedly Telegram has been used by criminals and extremists, the reason why the platform continues to face scrutiny from the Western governments. According to a CNN affiliate, Durov’s detention in France was linked to a warrant concerning Telegram’s lack of content moderation practices. In response to this claim, Telegram has stated that it has acted in accordance with EU regulations. It challenges the notion that the platform or its founder, Pavel Durov, should account for the abuse and misuse occurring on the platform.
