"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." After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users. But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat. Oh no. There’s a certain degree of myth-making around what exactly went on, so take everything that follows lightly. Telegram was originally launched as a side project by the Durov brothers, with Nikolai handling the coding and Pavel as CEO, while both were at VK. Individual messages can be fully encrypted. But the user has to turn on that function. It's not automatic, as it is on Signal and WhatsApp.
from ar
