Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, in 2014. “Privacy, ultimately, is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism,” he posted in 2015. Photo / Jim Wilson, The New York Times
Pavel Durov’s anti-establishment streak helped him create one of the world’s biggest online platforms, which emphasises free speech. It also put a target on his back.
More than a decade ago, when Russia pushed Pavel Durov to shut down the pages of opposition politicians on a Facebook-like site he had created, the tech entrepreneur responded online by posting a cheeky picture of a hoodie-wearing dog with its tongue out.
“Official response to the intelligence services to the request to block groups,” he wrote unapologetically.
Thirteen years later, Durov’s anti-establishment streak appears to have gotten him into a fresh round of trouble with the authorities. On Saturday, he was arrested in France as part of an investigation into criminal activity on Telegram, the online communications tool he founded in 2013, which had grown into a global platform defined by its hands-off approach to policing how users behaved.
On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France referred to Durov’s arrest and said that the country was “deeply committed to freedom of expression” but that “in a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life”.
Durov’s arrest has caused a firestorm, turning him into a folk hero among those concerned about free speech and government censorship, especially as scrutiny of online content has increased globally. Elon Musk, the owner of the social platform X, and Edward Snowden, the American intelligence contractor who fled to Russia after disclosing classified information, were among those who raced to Durov’s defence. The hashtag #FreePavel spread on X as debate raged over the murky intersection between tech and freedom of speech.
Telegram said in a statement on Sunday that it abides by European Union laws. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company said.
Telegram has long been underpinned by Durov’s anti-authority ethos and commitment to free speech. A devout techno-optimist with a flair for trolling authorities online, the 39-year-old has said he believes strongly that governments should not censor what people say or do on the internet.
That guiding maxim helped Telegram become a popular chat app for Russians, Iranians and others living under authoritarian governments. But Durov’s laissez-faire approach to policing the platform has also attracted terrorists, extremists, gun runners, scammers and drug dealers.
Secrecy trumps the closer policing of online speech, he has said. “Privacy, ultimately, is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism,” he posted in 2015.
“To be truly free, you should be ready to risk everything for freedom,” Durov wrote on Instagram in 2018 beneath a photo of himself atop a horse in the desert.
On his personal social media accounts, Durov’s posts showcase an eclectic lifestyle. In one recent post, he claimed he had fathered more than 100 biological children in 12 countries as a sperm donor over the past 15 years. He said he was sharing the information to help destigmatise the topic, adding that he first donated sperm to help a friend struggling with infertility and that he planned to “open source” his DNA.
But Durov’s biggest priority is Telegram. In 2014, he left Russia amid growing scrutiny from its security services and eventually decamped to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he said the government would not interfere with his business. Since then, he has fought with Apple and major governments over content controls. Telegram has faced temporary or permanent bans in 31 countries, according to Surfshark, a maker of VPN software used to avoid internet blocks.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired in April, Durov accused the FBI of trying to hire a Telegram programmer so the US government could gain access to user data. During the interview, one of his first in years, he held two sculptures of chairs, one covered in knives and the other with phalluses – an apparent allusion to a Russian prison joke.
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Born in 1984 in the Soviet Union, Durov moved with his family when he was 4 to northern Italy. His brother, Nikolai, a math whiz who became Telegram’s chief technology officer, was featured on Italian television solving cubic equations. In the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Durovs returned to St. Petersburg, where Pavel and Nikolai participated in youth math competitions and coded on an IBM computer the family had brought back from Italy.
In college in St. Petersburg, a friend showed Durov an early version of Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg. Inspired, Durov set out to make his own version. Vkontakte, a service he started in 2006, dominated Russia within a few years. It also attracted notice from the Kremlin, which demanded information about Vkontakte’s users.
Durov said he had begun building Telegram to be a more secure way to communicate after Russian security forces showed up at his apartment around 2011. Durov, who was still running Vkontakte while building Telegram, said the government had eventually given him an ultimatum: hand over data about Vkontakte’s users or lose control of the company and be forced to leave the country.
“I chose the latter,” Durov said.
In a Telegram post after Durov’s arrest this weekend, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former Prime Minister, said Durov “wanted to be a brilliant man of the world who lives well without a homeland,” but “he miscalculated”. Durov, however, would always be Russian, Medvedev wrote, and “therefore unpredictable and dangerous”.
At times, Durov’s anti-government streak turned dark. In 2013, he hit a Russian police officer in a Mercedes in St. Petersburg; he was fleeing a traffic stop after driving on the sidewalk to get around a traffic jam, according to a former Telegram employee and a Kremlin intelligence briefing viewed by The New York Times. Durov later wrote on his Vkontakte page at the time: “When you run over a policeman, it is important to drive back and forth so all the pulp comes out,” according to the briefing document.
In a 2012 incident, Durov and other Vkontakte employees threw hundreds of rubles folded up as paper planes from the window of the company’s St. Petersburg offices, resulting in a street brawl below.
Since disavowing Russia, Durov has lived itinerantly surrounded by Telegram engineers. He moves location every few months, former employees said. He has spent time in Barcelona, Bali, Berlin, Helsinki and San Francisco, even as he made Dubai Telegram’s formal headquarters. He remains an earnest engineering leader, often obsessed with the app’s features at the expense of making money or moderating criminal activity, former employees said.
Durov has citizenship for the United Arab Emirates and France, according to Telegram. Though he travels by private jet, he has said he eschews buying things, keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in his bank account and bitcoin to ensure he can be free. Bloomberg has estimated his net worth at more than US$9 billion ($14.5b).
“I would rather make decisions that would influence how people communicate rather than choosing the colour of seats in the house,” he said in the interview with Carlson.
Telegram is now approaching 1 billion users worldwide, making it larger than X. Telegram works as a messaging app, similar to WhatsApp or iMessage. But it also hosts groups with up to 200,000 users and has broadcasting features that help people and groups share views with even larger audiences. The service is particularly popular in Ukraine, Brazil, Indonesia, India and Russia.
As use of Telegram exploded, Durov’s light touch to policing content drew criticism. Policymakers, law enforcement and security researchers said the app had become a haven for disinformation, terrorism propaganda, far-right extremism, drug dealing, child pornography and weapons sales.
Over the years, Telegram has taken down some content, such as child sexual abuse material or posts explicitly aimed at inciting violence. But the authorities were often frustrated by Durov’s lack of co-operation. Others have raised concerns that Telegram maintains ties to the Russian Government, which lifted a ban of the service in 2020. Security experts have also warned that the tool, which does not use the same encryption standards as apps like Signal, is not as secure as the company says.
On Monday, French prosecutors said Durov was being held as part of an investigation opened last month into crimes related to child pornography, fraud, drug trafficking and money laundering. He remained in custody, which can be extended through Wednesday.
For years, Durov largely avoided the public scrutiny that his Silicon Valley peers faced. While Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai of Google and Shou Chew of TikTok have been called to testify before Congress, Durov and his engineers maintained and updated Telegram while on the move. At one point, they released a product update from a boat in Southeast Asia that had only limited connectivity, a former employee said.
On Instagram, Durov occasionally posts glossy shots of an idyllic, made-for-social-media lifestyle. An exercise buff who encourages followers not to drink alcohol, he has posted shirtless pictures of himself.
Alongside one recent picture of him plunging into an ice bath, he quoted Marcus Aurelius: “A man must stand upright, not be kept upright by others.” In another topless post, he participated in a game called the #PutinShirtlessChallenge, to mock the Russian leader’s online posts of himself shirtless.
“If you’re Russian, you have to join #PutinShirtlessChallenge (or face oblivion). Two rules from Putin — no photoshop, no pumping. Otherwise you’re not an alpha,” he wrote.
In June, Durov discussed his summer plans. While others were vacationing, he said he would travel to Central Asia, where Telegram was popular, to learn how it was used there.
Even so, he said, France was on his mind.
“It’s getting warmer in Dubai, and my friends are leaving for fancy places like the south of France,” he wrote. “As a French citizen, I agree that France is the best holiday destination.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano
Photographs by: Jim Wilson
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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