In 2014, Pavel Durov fled the country after allies of the Kremlin took control of the social networking site most know just as VK. Russia's intelligence agency had asked Durov to turn over the data of anti-Kremlin protesters. Durov refused to do so. Again, in contrast to Facebook, Google and Twitter, Telegram's founder Pavel Durov runs his company in relative secrecy from Dubai. Telegram users are able to send files of any type up to 2GB each and access them from any device, with no limit on cloud storage, which has made downloading files more popular on the platform. On February 27th, Durov posted that Channels were becoming a source of unverified information and that the company lacks the ability to check on their veracity. He urged users to be mistrustful of the things shared on Channels, and initially threatened to block the feature in the countries involved for the length of the war, saying that he didn’t want Telegram to be used to aggravate conflict or incite ethnic hatred. He did, however, walk back this plan when it became clear that they had also become a vital communications tool for Ukrainian officials and citizens to help coordinate their resistance and evacuations. Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country.
from ar
