Either way, Durov says that he withdrew his resignation but that he was ousted from his company anyway. Subsequently, control of the company was reportedly handed to oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Igor Sechin, both allegedly close associates of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Telegram was founded in 2013 by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Durov wrote that Telegram was "increasingly becoming a source of unverified information," and he worried about the app being used to "incite ethnic hatred." False news often spreads via public groups, or chats, with potentially fatal effects. "He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Maréchal said.
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