Andrey, a Russian entrepreneur living in Brazil who, fearing retaliation, asked that NPR not use his last name, said Telegram has become one of the few places Russians can access independent news about the war. 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. In a message on his Telegram channel recently recounting the episode, Durov wrote: "I lost my company and my home, but would do it again ā without hesitation." At this point, however, Durov had already been working on Telegram with his brother, and further planned a mobile-first social network with an explicit focus on anti-censorship. Later in April, he told TechCrunch that he had left Russia and had āno plans to go back,ā saying that the nation was currently āincompatible with internet business at the moment.ā He added later that he was looking for a country that matched his libertarian ideals to base his next startup. Given the pro-privacy stance of the platform, itās taken as a given that itāll be used for a number of reasons, not all of them good. And Telegram has been attached to a fair few scandals related to terrorism, sexual exploitation and crime. Back in 2015, Vox described Telegram as āISISā app of choice,ā saying that the platformās real use is the ability to use channels to distribute material to large groups at once. Telegram has acted to remove public channels affiliated with terrorism, but Pavel Durov reiterated that he had no business snooping on private conversations.
from nl