"For Telegram, accountability has always been a problem, which is why it was so popular even before the full-scale war with far-right extremists and terrorists from all over the world," she told AFP from her safe house outside the Ukrainian capital. It is unclear who runs the account, although Russia's official Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account promoted the Telegram channel on Saturday and claimed it was operated by "a group of experts & journalists." 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. 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. "He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Maréchal said.
from nl
