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. "He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Maréchal said. Despite Telegram's origins, its approach to users' security has privacy advocates worried. 'Wild West' WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world.
from jp
