Founder Pavel Durov says tech is meant to set you free Artem Kliuchnikov and his family fled Ukraine just days before the Russian invasion. The next bit isn’t clear, but Durov reportedly claimed that his resignation, dated March 21st, was an April Fools’ prank. TechCrunch implies that it was a matter of principle, but it’s hard to be clear on the wheres, whos and whys. Similarly, on April 17th, the Moscow Times quoted Durov as saying that he quit the company after being pressured to reveal account details about Ukrainians protesting the then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Messages are not fully encrypted by default. That means the company could, in theory, access the content of the messages, or be forced to hand over the data at the request of a government. For example, WhatsApp restricted the number of times a user could forward something, and developed automated systems that detect and flag objectionable content.
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