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Tonight the same interview was released with the founder of Telegram Pavel Durov, which he took famous propagandist Tucker Carlson. As expected, this is a continuous stream of Telegram self-PR and, of course, Elon Musk Durov’s “heroic struggle” for freedom of speech and the secrecy of correspondence. In this post we present some of the main points from the interview, which are highlighted in the title.
The part where Pavel Durov once again tries to refute his affiliation with Russia, you can watch for yourself if you wish, but we will just remind you that one of the creators and former general director of the Russian social network VKontakte, which was banned and blocked in Ukraine back in 2017, never directly did not call the Russian Federation an aggressor and a terrorist, which started a war with the sole purpose of genocide of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukraine as a state.
In an hour-long interview, Durov said that in 2013 he refused to give up the personal data of VKontakte users who were organizing protests in Ukraine, at the request of the Russian side, and left the Russian Federation. The founder of Telegram said that he tried to do business in different parts of the world: Berlin, London, Singapore, San Francisco. But everywhere he was hampered by bureaucracy. After all, he came to the UAE “seven years ago” and has had no regrets since. Durov considers compliance with “neutrality” as one of the fundamental principles of foreign policy to be the main advantage of the UAE.
“The UAE is a neutral, small country that wants to live with everyone in peace and harmony, and does not have geopolitical alliances with any of the world superpowers.
And that’s why this is the best place for a neutral platform like Telegram, because we need to make sure that we can protect the privacy of our users and their right to free speech.”
Pavel Durov,
Telegram creator
In an interview, Pavel Durov mentioned persecution by the FBI and other US intelligence agencies, who pestered him at the airport and came home to find out details about the work of the messenger. He also told how, during his last visit to the United States, local services tried to find out from one of the Telegram developers what open libraries the product uses and tried to convince him to add “some tools” to the code.
The founder of Telegram complained that due to its neutrality, the messenger is constantly under pressure from governments of different countries, but most of all they are under pressure from Apple and Google, which constantly abuse their monopoly position and can easily remove Telegram clients from their stores for violation of internal rules. According to Durov, Apple and Google use general wording of the rules to interpret and apply in accordance with their own interests. Suddenly, this is a very ancient song.
What else Pavel Durov said in the interview:
- Telegram is used by 900 million people every month (it expects to grow to 1 billion by the end of 2024) and 2.5 million new users register in the messenger every day, and this with zero advertising costs. According to Pavel Durov, Telegram's audience is growing entirely organically, while competitors are pouring “tens of billions of dollars” into advertising and copying features from six years ago.
- The creator of Telegram has “several hundred million dollars” in his bank account and keeps part of the money in bitcoins. Does not waste money on real estate, luxury cars and yachts, but instead makes informed decisions that have value and significance for those close to them with 900 million Telegram users.
- Pavel Durov is the sole and sole owner of Telegram. He is also the main PM who makes all management decisions. At least according to him. Telegram does not have an HR department, since Durov considers it unnecessary, and the entire development team is 30 of the best specialists, “a kind of squad of Navy SEALs.”
- Until now, Telegram has not attracted money from venture capital funds in order to maintain independence, and these principles remain. There are no immediate plans to go public (IPO), but this is possible in the more distant future.
- Durov believes that his VKontakte at one time was in many ways surpassed by Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg seemed to have taken and used the idea that Durov shared with him during a personal meeting.
- The founder of Telegram likes Elon Musk’s management style and the fact that he bought Twitter (X), since the businessman constantly experiments and tries to create innovations, while others simply copy the ideas of others. He believes the world needs more innovators like Elon Musk.
It remains only to remember that yesterday Durov also teased another interview with an unknown journalist of liberal views.
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Full version of the video interview with Durov, which Carlson took
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