C4.eth (choguun)

📹 Pavel Durov, in his first video interview in seven years, revealed to @TuckerCarlson some fascinating facts about @telegram, doing business in Dubai and his personal crypto wealth: • @durov launched @vkontakte (Russian social media platform) at the age of 21 but had to sell the company and leave the country after refusing to share user data with the Russian authorities. • Durov says his life goal is to give people freedom and privacy. • Telegram is not controlled by the Russian or U.S. governments, yet the FBI allegedly tried to create a backdoor in @telegram by recruiting one of its developers. Agents also meet Durov at the airport and ask him questions whenever he comes to the United States. • Once, he fought three robbers who tried to steal his phone in San Francisco after meeting Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter. • Partially because of that and the attention from U.S. agencies, he decided not to HQ his company there. He was also put off by the bureaucracy in Germany, Britain and Singapore and opted for Dubai as a neutral ground. • Durov received two letters from U.S. senators: Democratic Party senators wanted to get access to the Jan. 6 rioters’ personal data, claiming that otherwise, Telegram violates the U.S. Constitution. The team ignored the request. Later, Republican Party senators sent a conflicting letter stating that the company would have broken the law if it had shared the data. • According to Durov, there’s a lot of pressure coming from Apple and Google, and they have become the #1 source of online censorship. • Durov owns 100% of Telegram and wants to keep it independent, with no plans for an IPO. • Currently, 30 people are working at Telegram. The team doesn’t spend a budget on marketing, yet the user base keeps growing. The goal is to achieve one billion users in the next few years. • Maintaining the current level of privacy is getting harder. There may be a need for protected smartphones to ensure confidentiality in the future, and Durov says he doesn’t trust his phone and assumes he is being tracked. • He was in favor of the purchase of Twitter by @elonmusk, and Durov believes it will have a positive impact on the social networking industry. • Durov stopped dealing with Mark Zuckerberg after the latter allegedly stole his idea of in-built apps for social media. • Durov has a few hundred million dollars in his bank account and owns $BTC, but he doesn’t spend it on anything, as it would undermine his freedom. Instead, he opts to invest everything back into Telegram.