Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Kyiv-based lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties, called Durovโs position "very weak," and urged concrete improvements. 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. 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. Given the pro-privacy stance of the platform, itโs taken as a given that itโll 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 โISISโ app of choice,โ saying that the platformโs 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. "He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Marรฉchal said.
from pl