Perpetrators of such fraud use various marketing techniques to attract subscribers on their social media channels. Pavel Durov, Telegram's CEO, is known as "the Russian Mark Zuckerberg," for co-founding VKontakte, which is Russian for "in touch," a Facebook imitator that became the country's most popular social networking site. "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. In a message on his Telegram channel recently recounting the episode, Durov wrote: "I lost my company and my home, but would do it again – without hesitation." "Russians are really disconnected from the reality of what happening to their country," Andrey said. "So Telegram has become essential for understanding what's going on to the Russian-speaking world."
from ar
