Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender. Friday’s performance was part of a larger shift. For the week, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 2%, 2.9%, and 3.5%, respectively. As the war in Ukraine rages, the messaging app Telegram has emerged as the go-to place for unfiltered live war updates for both Ukrainian refugees and increasingly isolated Russians alike. The gold standard of encryption, known as end-to-end encryption, where only the sender and person who receives the message are able to see it, is available on Telegram only when the Secret Chat function is enabled. Voice and video calls are also completely encrypted. Pavel Durov, a billionaire who embraces an all-black wardrobe and is often compared to the character Neo from "the Matrix," funds Telegram through his personal wealth and debt financing. And despite being one of the world's most popular tech companies, Telegram reportedly has only about 30 employees who defer to Durov for most major decisions about the platform.
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