Pavel Durov
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Telegram is one of the fastest growing and biggest social messaging apps, text apps in the world, popular all around the world, including in the united states. But almost nothing are very little seems to be known about. The company is headquarter in the by where we are now IT is run and owned in the software, is to design written by power jarve, who began IT some years ago and who almost never does interviews.

IT turns out he's in a very interesting person, extremely interesting person. We learned that the other day will talk to him and he has agreed to set down and telesp himself in this company. And we thought to be definitely we're hearing. And with that possible.

thank you for joining us. Well, thank you for having .

me so um I confession, use telegram. I didn't know anything about you or the company, and I was just kind of amazed by your story. And if you ouldn't mind just recreating a little bit for our audience, where from, how do you start this online?

Uh, that'll be a long story. That's okay. Uh, I was born in one thousand eighty four in the soviet union. So IT was a fun year to be born in.

And uh, back then I could witness you know the deficiencies of the centralized system we had in the soviet t union. When I was four years old, my family moved to italy, where I could compare what I saw in turin, italy, with what I experienced in the soviet union. And I thought the capital system, the free market system, is definitely Better, at least to me.

I went to school in italy, became sort of a part of the european as a result. But then when the soviet union collapsed, we decided to move back to russia. 啊。

In italy though, we, me and my brother, we had a lot of fun time. Uh, he was a shown live on italian T. V. As a 呃 Young prodigy kid who could solve cubic equations in real time being just， you know, ten years old, and that was considered to be impossible back. Ita.

I don't yeah difficult.

And when I first went to school, I didn't know how to speak italian. I am always single word. And a lot of teachers said, this guy, well, this kid will not going to be successful in our school by the end of the first year was second best.

By the end of the next year was the best student in our class. So IT also showed me that, well, you could excel, you could compete. I'll like that competitive environment. And then when we got back to russia, IT was a little bit cayote.

The only reason we got back is my father got a an offer to run one of the departments in the camp test book state university is one of the a famous scholars and writers, uh uh, dealing with the ancient roman literature. And uh that experience was very different. And uh, I still enjoyed IT because in russia, in the nineteen you had this experimental schools were, uh you were taught everything like we had six foreign languages. We had math, like very specialized six.

four gn languages at once.

six reign languages. In parallel. You would have math similar that you would have in specialized mass schools, and the chemistry at the same level you would have at schools specialized and chemistry, biology.

So that was really intense 啊。 My brother, he became the world champion in mats in a international government, bids in math and programing many times in the world. Uh, absolute best myself. I was just the best student in my school. Also did a some Victories, ies in local competitions in several areas.

But we both were very passionate about coding and designing stuff and because we brought this I B M uh P C X T computer from italy back in the early nineties, we are one of the few families in russia who could actually uh teach ourselves how to program. And uh, we started to do that well, I was a in the university. I was building websites for my fill students.

And uh, as a result, you know, I started a company that became what they called the facebook of russia. We don't like to a name of that way because we actually managed to do a lot of things before facebook. And that defined how the social media, uh.

Industry developed in the years to come. The company's name was B. K. I started IT when I was twenty one years old.

I was just graduated university, and the IT eventually became the largest social network, the most popular social works in russia, ukraine, blow russia castle and a bunch of other popular countries. Uh, that was a significant effort on my side because I, at the certain point, was the sole employee of the company. I would write the code myself, I the design myself, I would manage the servers myself.

I was quite intense. I even uh responded to customer support request. 那 barely slept， but that was uh a fun time when I was twenty one twenty two years old. Um and then the company grew, like I said, to somewhere about one hundred million active users, which was a lot back then.

It's a because I think two thousand uh twelve for two thousand eleven when we face this the our first issues in russia, because you will see I was still a big believer in this values of free market freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. So when the russian opposition started to use V, K. To organize large protests in russia, where like almost half a million people will would go and protest on the main square or some of the main square of the city.

We were requested to ban these communities on B。 K. By the government, and I refused. So the .

government asked you to shut down communications between their components.

which is social networking theories. So they have this large public communities that anybody can join. Anybody can read what people are discussing or what the administrators are posting. They can comment, they can share. So he was a tool for this protesters to organize themselves.

S, back then, IT wasn't about us, you know, siding with one side with one part of the, uh, political, uh, fight with the other IT was as defending the freedom of special the freedom of assembly, which we believed was the right thing. But that didn't go too well with with the government and they were not too happy about that, I would say. And in a few years from then, in twenty teen, we had a similar situation.

Where are you had this protest in ukraine, where people again would use the k to organize themselves and go to the main square of the city and the show their disagreements ment with the government? yes. And we receive a request flash demand from the russian side saying you have to give us the private data of the organizers of the protests.

And our response was, wait, wait a minute. This is a different country. We won't betray our ukrainian users because you're ask us to do that. We decided to refuse and uh, that didn't go here too well with the russian government as well.

So at the end of that year, I had to make a difficult decision because I was offered basic a choice between two suboptimal options, uh, one of which was I would start complain to whatever of the leaders of the country told me to do. The other one was I could um so mistake in the company, retire, resign as the C. E.

O. And leave the country. I chose the letter.

That's it's a to test you posit a little strange because I have heard people say that telegram as part of the russian government and you're describing the opposite. You're seeing her to leave the country because you wouldn't bother their demands.

Well, that exactly like you saying, people who have very limited knowledge of our telegram came from, they would make these claims if they could be encouraged by our competitors who see IT as a easy way to discredit us because, you know tell spreading like forest fire, two and a half million users sign up every day and where sort of threat. So i'm not surprised there's this perception is our capacity spend tens of billions of marketing, and they are known for using P, R firms to also engaging campaigns like that.

So how would how much you spend a market zero.

zero dollars .

in dollars.

zero dollars. We've never spent anything on acquiring users for marketing purposes. We never promote a telegram, you know uh on other social platforms in in anyway， uh, this is very different from other apps.

You could see them being promoted here. Their children is different. All of our growth is organic. Uh, we got to almost nine hundred million users, uh, without having to spend anything on ads to promote。

I'm starting to no, no interest. I have her people say that, but sounds like the opposite of the true. So you decided to sell the company, resign CEO and leave your country.

Yes, that's what I did was a bit painful because obviously my first company was my baby. I created my stuff. There was a lot of creativity, time and effort invested in that platform. But at the same time, uh, you know, I understood that I would rather be free.

I want to take orders from anyone and uh, I left behind, probably comfortable life, uh but for me IT was never about not becoming, which for me everything in my life was about becoming free and to the accent is is possible. My mission life was to allow other people to also become free innocence and using the platforms that we create or I created, uh, my hope was that they could express their freedoms. Uh, this is the mission of telegram. And IT was also in part the mission of my previous company. K.

we wanted to pause this interview just a minute to point something out. When the russian government asked power giraffe to use his social media company to sensor its political opportunity fused, he said he would rather resign and leave the country where he was born and participate in something like that. Such was his commitment to free speech.

Now you ve got to compare that what he did, what pub draft did to what mark zuker berg did, or prog agarwal. The guy ran twitter before elon must bought IT. Both of them have collaborated with governments to sensor people, and that's shameful.

So we believe povl, when he says that is his APP telegram, will be a bastion of free speech because he has been, and we believe in because he shown how committed to that he is. So we decided they we're going to launch with pride, our own telegram channel to give one more avenue to reach people with our content free from censorship. So if you're on telegram, we asked, you would subscribed to a new channel for by searching for a user name listed below or honored to be doing this storing, get back to our conversation with public draft. So you start telegram after you leave russia.

correct? yeah. So the idea for telegram came when we were still based in russia, because at some point we had this very stressed situation.

Where aren't policeman would come to my house, try to break in because I refuse to take down this opposition. That I mentioned earlier, and I realized there is no secure means of communication. I realized I want to tell my brother what's going on to coordinate whatever we want to do.

And every tool to communicate I could use was not really secure, not encrypted, uh, IT was not safe to use them. So I thought you could be a good idea to actually come up with a decently, quipped the messaging APP. And my brother being the genius that he is, he was able to create this encysted standard. But we are using up until this day, with minor changes.

But brother wrote the .

encryption, yes. Well, my brother is the two P. H.

And maths super smart. He could, you know, he is. This is an expert in photography. Uh, he designed, uh, the basic principles of the toilets. scription. I was more in the user interface side, the way how the APP works, the features at sea he was responsible for, for the increase side.

So where did you go when you left rush?

We tried several places. We have first went to berlin. We try to set up a company in the land.

We then tried, london, singapore, poor tendance. Cisco, you named IT. We're we've been everywhere.

And why didn't you stay in any of those places?

Oh, because the bur craic hurdles were just up too difficult to overcome. No, I was bringing the best in class programmer in the world to this places, and I was trying to hire them up from a local company.

And the response I got in places like germany, for example, is that, no, no, no, you can't hire people from outside of the european, an union, because you should first run some newspaper ad and local a magazine ever, and then for for six months, nobody responds from engineers that are available inside the european union and germany. Then you're allowed get to to high outsiders. And I thought IT was a crazy idea.

because why didn't you just say they were a literate refugees?

Well, because we didn't consider yourself. If we were, you are very successful people. We could have gone anywhere. No.

but if you told them you're illiterate refugees, they will let you stay. Yeah so you you go from germany to singapore to london to send cisco, what happened to and .

cisco on sefra? Cisco, we really thought that would be the place for us to be in because all the departments are going there or around some for isco. And uh, there are two things that happened that, uh made us, uh, think twice.

Uh, well, one thing is prety obvious. Uh, I wasn't some Francisco. I got attacked on the street after visiting, uh, a, uh, I think was jack doc, uh, in twitter, in the twitter's office and I was walking back at eight P M uh to my hotel and I got attacked in the street. A this is the only country where I got attack industry.

What what happened?

Three big guys tried to grab my phone from my hands. I was looking uh, about the fact that I just met uh, the founder of twitter that seemed right, like a right idea for me background uh to do and H I get attacked. I didn't want to let them have my phone.

Um they probably didn't expect uh resistance um so I snatched my phone back. There was a short fight with the guys. There was also the blood involved. But I managed to run away a and decided I should provide they probably don't mugg.

A lot of russians might have been surprised.

but there are much taller than me. I might that met, and there are three of them, but I think I put up a good fight where you .

surprised that this happened. yeah. IT was shocked .

to me because I I traveled a lot. That was the first place I I got attacked. And I thought, all right, maybe we shouldn't, uh, look at some franco. Maybe there are other places in amErica where where .

you don't get .

attacked here exactly. But you know there is the second part which was probably more alarming there in the west. Uh, we get too much attention from the the F B I, the security agencies wherever we came to the U S.

So to give an example, last time I was in in the U. S, I brought uh an engineer that is working for telegram and there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by cyber s. Security officers or agents, uh, where they are called the U.

S. government. Hire your engineer.

That's by standing. That's what he .

told to right code for them. Break in to telegram.

They were curious to learn which open source libraries are degraded to the total ms. APP. Now, on the client side, and they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate unto. The telegram called that in mind, the standing would serve back doors.

would allow the U. S. Government to spy on people who use telegram.

The U. S. Government or maybe any other government because the backdoor is a backdoor regardless of who is using IT. The right and and you're .

that's a little surprising to hear. Maybe it's not surprising. It's it's offensive. Your confident .

that happened. Yes, there is no reason for my engineer to make up the stories also because I personally experienced similar pressure in the U. S. Whenever I would go to the U. S, I would have a two F, B, I agents greet me, the airport asking questions.

One time I was a having my breakfast like nine time, and the, uh, the F, B, I showed up my house that I was renting. And h, that was quite surprising. And I thought we getting too much attention here. Uh, it's probably not the best in environment to run.

Why would have you committed a crime?

No, they were interested to learn more about telegram. They knew eye, you know, left russia. They they knew what 哥 doing， but they wanted details. And my understanding is that they wanted to establish a relationship p to, in a way, control telegram Better. I, I, I, I understand that we're doing their job, which is that for us running a privacy focused social, a platform that probably wasn't the best environment to be. And we want to be focused on what we do, not on the government relations of that government relations.

Um so then you came to you way to bed.

Yes, seven years ago we uh, moved here. We first wanted just to try for half year. See, you would work out and IT turned out to be a great place.

We never look back. We never wanted to change the U E. For any other after that.

why?

For a number of reasons. First, the ease of doing business here is so high。 For example, you can hire people from anywhere in the world as long as you are paying them a good salary.

The resent permits that granted automatically, it's very different if we try to do that in european smaller countries, it's very different from them. Second is very tax efficient. A third, uh, the infrastructure is great.

You get a lot for, uh, the minimum amount of taxes. You are pink, the the, the, the, the roads, the airports, the hotels, everything. I think you witnessed yourself, yes, but I think more importantly is that it's a neutral place, is a neutral country, is a small country that wants to be friends with friends with everybody.

Uh, it's not aligned geopolitically with the any of the big super powers. And I think it's a the best place for a neutral platform like hours to be in if we want to make sure we can defend our users privacy and freedom speech. On junior, here guys are you're receiving letters from the IOS claiming you go back taxes as penalties and interest fees piled up.

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So in the time that you've been here, there have been a number of wars and threats of war precautions to war. Um have you had any pressure from the government here? Honestly, any pressure from the government here um to reveal a back door into telegram or to ban any one or to make any changes to your business.

zero. That's the best part. For all the seven years we've been here, there has been zero pressure coming from the U A.

Towards telega. They're been very supportive, very helpful. And it's a big contrast from you know whatever we've experiences before.

Um what about what you've experience since since you moved here in those seven years? Have you come under pressure from other governments under whose jurisdiction you don't fall but to to accommodate their demands?

Well, of course, well, pilgrim is is a large platform. We are popular in many mini countries, and we've we've have been receiving a lot of request demands. Some of them were given mate, right? If if there was a group of people was promoting violence, there was some terrorist activity that was a you know, spreading violence in some parts of the world, publicly a boasting things that any decent human being would, this hour wouldn't want to be posted, we will help them. Or in some other cases where we thought that would be crossing the line, that wouldn't be, uh, we line with our values of freedom, speech on and protecting people's private correspondence. Can you give us an .

example of a request that you thought crossed into censorship and spying, violating people's privacy?

Well that's the I also a very funny story related to your home country. Uh after the events of generally the six uh we received the letter from I I believe uh, congressman of the democratic side a and they requested that we would share all the data we had in relation to what they called this uprising um and we checked IT with our lawyers and they said, you very ignorant but the letter seemed very serious.

Uh uh, the letter said, you know, if you are fail to comply with this request, you will be in violation with the U. S. Constitution or something. Uh.

so they wanted data on people who voted for the other guy in the election.

but they wanted the data of people yeah who were demonstrating in washington. However, yeah doing, uh, they are probably right. They were. I'm not the next for the s politics.

Uh what, uh was fighting about is two years exactly to sorry, two weeks after later we got another letter, a new letter from the republican side of the congress. And there we read that if we give out any data according to the previous request, we would be in violation of the U. S.

constitution. So we got two letters that said whatever we do would be violating the U. S. Constitution in a way that goes. My understanding of this letters are from the .

same legislative body, both from the U. S. congress. yes. So how do you .

respond to that wall? The same way we respond to most such request, we decided to ignore them because it's such a complicated matter related to internal politics in the U. S. We don't want to take .

any if you I believe this strongly, if you ignore your problems, most of them do go away. It's very too. I really what says if, but it's true, that's amazing. Have you ever had demands that you can't ignore?

Well, IT IT depends unreasonable demands. So I would say the largest pressure towards the gram is not coming from governments, uh, it's coming from apple and google. Hi, so when you comes to freedom speech, those two platforms, they could basically sensor whatever you can read access on your smart for.

So we mean, do you run the risk of being thrown out of their stores?

exactly. That's what they make very clear that if we fail to comply with their guidelines so they call IT children can be removed from the stores.

Well, that would be not a small thing for you, right? Well.

it's not one be a small thing for us because obviously a big chunk of the world, world population will lose access they're using every day. But you know, we will not also be a small thing for them. I mean, there should I I believe there there must be find some compromise in such cases, but apple and google are not very compromising when IT comes to the guidance. If they believe some content is against their rules, they will see to IT that all the apps that are distributed to the, uh, stores comply with this rules.

Are any of those rules? Or do you interpret any of those rules? You believe any of them to be particle in nature?

And some of them, but it's not the rules, is the application of the rules. The rules themselves, they're pretty general, right? So there must be no violence, discrimination, public publicly available.

I know child abuse materials is hard to disagree with that, yes. But then when they start to apply those rules, sometimes we are not agreed with with their interpretation. And we try to get back to apple and google, whoever this, and say, look, we think you got that wrong.

We think actually this is the legitimate of people expressing their opinions. And sometimes they do agree to make credit, sometimes they disagree. And we still have to take some content down, least the versions of telegram that to distributed through their platforms.

So there are a bunch of a number of conflicts going on around the world now, and that may accelerate. So would you expect to the number of demands and the intensity of those demands, the persistence of those demands would increase as the words become more intense?

Let's see, i'm really hopeful that the posters is behind us. I want to be optimistic. Um I think now we reached a point where.

Politicians and societies know what to expect from social media platforms and where the uh the red lines are yes, uh, we also learned much more about the requirements coming from both them and google, flash, apple. So and our users get Better educated as well, what what is allowed was not allowed. So I don't necessarily believe that things are going to get worse.

IT dos seem like the red line for for governments is allowing organized opposition to the rule. That's what you saw in russia with valley and ukraine crisis in two thousand and fourteen. That's what you saw from the democratic member of congress after january six. I def.

there's a pattern here. Telegram has been used by protesters in is like hong kong filter rules a coastal even in the barcelona back in the day.

yes. So it's it's.

it's been at to for the position to a large extent, but IT doesn't really matter whether its a position or the ruling party that is using the gram for us. We apply the rules equally to all sides. We don't become prejudice in this way。 It's not that we are rooting for their position where we are rooting for the ruling party of it's not that we don't care, but we think it's important to uh, have this platform that is neutral to all voices because we believe that uh, the competition of different ideas can result in the progress and a Better world for everyone that's um .

in start contrast to say facebook which has said in public, you know we tip the scale in favor of this or that movement and this or that country all far from the west and far from western media attention they've said that what do you think of that tech companies choosing governments?

Well, I think that's one of the reasons why we ended up here in the U. A. Out of all places. I so you you don't want to be geo politically aligned.

You don't want to select the winners in any of this political fights, and that's why you have to be in a neutral place. But I think facebook in particular has a have a lot of the reasons, apart from being based in the U. S, for doing what they're doing. I I think every open platform plays its own role and we believe that humanity doesn't need a neutral platform like telegram， uh, that would be respectful to people's privacy and freedoms.

Maybe the from a political perspective IT seems like the most provocative thing telegram does is offer something called channels would seem sort of ready made for organizing groups of people. Can you explain to what a telegram channel is?

yes. So telegram channel is a one to many broadcast too, that allows people to, quickly disseminate any message to millions of people。 So there's a channel people subscribed to. IT is a one way communication, meaning a channel can be used by, say, president or ahead of state and um everybody else will not be able to send a message to the president, but the president will be able to send a message to all of the people who subscribe to his channel, yes or channel. So the point here is, uh, channels are so easy to use and they're so deeply integrated the messaging user interface that they became extremely popular.

So you receive IT like a text exactly.

So it's is a very familiar form for people. And since we launch watch channels eight years ago, I believe H A few other apps, popular apps, followed in our fools PS and called in the teacher as well. Not nearly as advanced as we have, but IT shows that is a really a high quality and demanded feature that the world needs.

I think it's you don't have to answer any these questions to be the one is too personal. But um you're the owner. You you and it's very unusual.

In fact, i've never seen IT um to have a large business like this own by one person. Why didn't you take? And you could have cash, private equity money on the way, but you didn't. Why didn't .

mean that? sure. As of now, tigers was one hundred percent owned by myself, which is, like I said, quite unusual.

I've never heard of that before.

The the reason I try to you stay away from venture capital money, at least the early stages of our development, is because we wanted to be independent when you that our mission and our goals not necessarily consistent with the goals of funds that could be investing into us. And also, for me was never about about money, right? So I have a few hundred million dollars in my bank account or a bit corn since ten years ago.

And I don't do anything with IT. I don't any real state jets, uh or yet. I don't think those this life style for me, i'd like to focus what we .

are doing with you don't know anything like big assets. You don't no big asset. An island in hawaii?

No, no, no land. No, really state nothing.

why?

But because for me, my number one priority in life is my freedom. And once you start buying things first, IT will die you down to a physical location. In my view, its my personality.

I don't have nothing against people who are buying. We stayed. But in my personal view, IT would be like this for me. And the second reason is I like to stay focused on what we do, a toilet. So I know that if I buy house, I buy that something like that, I would be spending time trying to make a nice. And yeah, this will require a lot of time.

And never would you go with weather seats or valve seats.

exactly.

and you're not even to choose.

Yes, for me, I would rather make decisions that would influence how a billion people communicate, rather than choosing the color of seats in the house that only I am, my relatives from probably bunch of my friends C.

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interesting. And you didn't take because I want just type say the third time haven't seen this before. You obviously were famous Young man as a company, build A R. And so you could have really taken a lot of money and you didn't because you didn't want to be controlled.

I just didn't see any reason to do that. You know, I will had enough money to get by. Well, to be completely fair til groom de takes outside money, we issued bonds three years ago, so we raise that.

And that was a and and before that, we had a crip to currency project that also raise some funds. So there were instances were we raised outside uh, funding. But uh, when he comes to companies equity and you give ownership.

we didn't .

give anyone ownership or voting control or anything like that because we also believe in efficiency. I think that having myself as the sole owner, director and product manager for this, a extensive period of time and the company's development allowed us to move faster.

How could you be the only product manager? Are you still the only product manager in the company?

exactly. I still come up with all the most of the features. Uh, I still work directly with every engineer, every designer who is implement english teachers. Um i'm running this company because I enjoy IT. I'm the only product manager because I think this is the way can contribute how .

biggest your H R.

Department zero is. Well, could say it's me. And because the way we hardly you .

need a big hr department. You don't think you don't suffer without one.

We in a way to centralize that. We started a platform where we host contests for engineers. It's actually wanted dot com.

We have the separate uh platform for that. And we select the best of the best engineers as a result of the competitions that we organize. We hold them really months, two months.

So after a series of these competitions, we select the best of the best of the best and they then maybe can join our team, which is just about the thirty engineers. So it's it's really compact, the team super efficient like in navy you team. And uh uh this is how we Operate. We don't need H R. Department to find, uh, super talent engineers.

What does that? Everyone do this? I look at some of these tech companies are elon musk.

Famously, when he showed a twitter, many were people doing things that he didn't know they were doing, and they didn't know what they were doing. They were like, there was a world peace department and a foozled all department. what? Why does not everybody run their business like you? Well.

it's necessary resting question. I think IT all boils down to the question of the independence. Anyway, I asked this question to the pretty cesspool of elan jack jack and um and the his races are as well and what you said ick customer, yeah he and this jack he told me that, uh, if I told him, look, we can run this company with twenty people. You don't need so many people and the response was agree with you, but if we start firing so many people, IT will make the wall street its because they will think some thing is very wrong with the company and we don't want to do that. And that's why we can keep all these are employees.

So to keep the stock Price high, he had to run IT inefficiently. I mean, that's what .

you're saying if I understood him correctly, that's what what. But to to to his credit, elon has to take twitter private before he could do all there what there.

I mean, there's something sort of profoundly in what you're saying. I mean, the whole point of a publicly traded company or one of the points so the public can participate, the others ship the company, but also to outsiders can assess the Operations of the company. And so the transparently we know how the company is run because it's owned by the public.

And so IT would be, by definition, more efficient, you would think. But you are saying that is wildly less efficient that you wind up with the football department when is publicly traded, but when is privately held you down? I think that's kind of the opposite of what you would think. I guess most tech .

founders would actually agree that running a public company is less efficient than running a private company because you have to be accountable too much more people. There is a lot of redundancy procrit y involved. So from a purely like efficiency, that point I would argue, and I think other people would agree with me, that when a public company is subtitle, however, the other advantages of of getting listed and of course, that is relevant when you want to acquire other companies cash, yes, you have access to cheap capital. You know there is a little things you can do.

but you don't want to do any those things.

But I not not presently, definitely I am enjoying running my company in the way is but who knows what the future holds? But uh, as of now, I think we are doing a great job with the with telegram. Nine hundred million users will probably cross the billion uh, monthly active users within a year from now.

I think we are doing great. why? Why would we lose this momentum right now?

Can I go back to something you said at the outset? You don't have an H. R department.

You may have thirty engineers working for you. You run the products. You earn the company such a type organization.

But how do you get new users if you spend zero money for acquisitions? You're not advertising if you're not paying to bring people? And how do you how do you do that? How do you get to a billion for free?

But because people love our product, what we realize pretty early on is that people are smart. People like to use good things and they don't like to use infuriating.

That's why whenever you have a person who who started to use telegram and they are there for a while and they started to discover all the features, all the, uh you know the speed to secure the proves everything that we have, uh, they don't want to go back and they started inviting their friends, recommending them, you should really check this APP out because is so much Better than everything else and also because people realize that whatever uh, messaging apps they are using right now, there are like five, six years behind. They are copying what we did six years ago. And that's not a very high quality copy that they make about features.

So people have quality, that's why they move. They also love the independence. They also love the privacy.

They love the freedom. There are a lot of freezer. Why somebody would switch to telegram for mother so one of .

the things we learn when ella muscovitz ter is that the intel agency is not just C U. S. But a bunch of other countries.

The usual suspects um were all over the company. I mean, they were somebody were present working at the company. They had access to the direct messages.

You going to imagine what you know because you run one. But the wealth of data flowing through would be of great interest to to governments. Does that make you paranoid that you'll be penetrated? I mean, I assume governments would like to know what's going on were privately on telegram.

but there's definitely responsibility that we have shoulders and we I would say we are party but think IT makes sense to stay product and uh, you not being a too accessible, not traveling to weird places.

you don't travel the weird places.

I hope not. H like I travelled to places where I have a confidence that those places are a consistent with what we do in our values. I don't go to any of the big geopolitical powers of the countries like china or russia or not to the U. S. So 一 整个。

the U。 S.

I try not so I can go. But you know, it's a too much attention like you described before .

yeah because at some point, if you run something like this, you're a player in world politics. I think that what you want to be or not.

do you think we definitely don't want to be a player. We want to be a mutual platform that is impartial and no, doesn't take any side. But you're probably right, the some role we have to play well.

not taking aside is the one thing you're not allowed to do, right? I mean, aren't you required to take aside .

in the modern world? I think that's a big problem because I think that kind of. Attitude can result in our world becoming a more dangerous place, because at the end of the day, we all have to try to understand each other and try to get closer to each other in in terms of getting to know the positions of the other people, even though they are drastically different from our own positions. And that's how we get to some compromise and and move forward. If we are sickly divided and everybody is require to take aside and we can take aside because we are this platform that people should use to collaborate and to find common ground and hopefully to move forward, if we lose that, we can end up in a much more dangerous place.

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It's unlimited to premium wireless for fifteen dollars. And how are there still people paying two or three times that much? So I shouldn't be victim blaming here.

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New customers on 4， on xi. I often you interacted with the national security agency N A A. I asked that is someone whose text were read by them. So I know that they're very active in this world. Um what's you're .

experience but I think the N S A is not uh, an agency that works with you directly, right? Coming here to plastic.

I love IT say, is not an agency that works with you directly? No, that is true.

So my knowledge of my interactions with the N N A is very limited.

Yes, I could read .

something in the newspaper is about, you know, my phone been penetrated with, began as something like that. No idea where there is drawn up. But this is the only source of information I can have about me personally being of interest to any of you know, the secret agencies. But you've gotten .

think even though you having done an interview in seven years ish, uh, you know it's widely known by people who are interested who you are in your role in this. You gotta think you're under crazy amounts of surveilLance.

won't you think it's probably true, you know, IT would sound funny, but I assume by default that the devices I use, I, I, I compromised because you will still use an iphone or an hundred ID phone. And now, after experiencing what I experienced in the U. S, I have very limited faith in, 呃， platforms developed in the U. S. From a security test.

Point, yes, privacy and point exactly yeah. Because in a lot of countries, are our amErica included spying as described as quote, security. You're looking at IT from the other perspective, you're assuming that security is privacy in my right not to be spy upon but the governments describes buying upon U. S. security.

Thank you for this correction.

Um so last question, do you since you've done this, since you were in college and you've at the center of IT, where do you see IT going? And by this, I mean the free exchange, the private exchange information between south and individuals, human beings, non slaves.

When I was a child.

that was possible. It's increasingly difficult. Are we moving toward the world, whether just is no private communication? Or do you think that privacy will remain despite A A I are just massive increases in computing power?

Wow, this depends on the extent of privacy. Are when you say privacy will remain doing mean that we have absolute privacy. Now I don't .

think that we do. And I think the world is becoming less amenable, governments becoming less tolerant of privacy, and that's clearly the trend because they have more technological power. But will they win? I guess, will there ever be a way to preserve privacy? You know, can is a place for IT.

I believe in that. I am an optimist. I think some new secure hardware communication devices will be created uh, in a similar way that now we have, uh, hardware wallets to store your crypt to currency.

Yes, maybe we will have secure communication devices, you know, to send messages or the voice calls is possible. Uh, I do believe that, you know, the world develops in cycles. And if things seem to go in one direction, today doesn't seem, doesn't tell mean that tomorrow they will go the same direction.

I also feel that at some point, people will get tired of what the experience today and they would decide to no move to some other direction. So it's I I would I seen after call IT, for example. So during cit, do you had a lot of restrictions also on social media platforms? You when most social meter platforms, you were not really allowed to express doubt in relation to lock downs, vaccines or masks.

And the at some point I could feel like the sentiment changed. People started to feel very, very tarred and sometimes angry. But the fact that they were not allowed to express their opinions, particularly after the end of the bendest C, A lot of people start to be. Even more sceptical about the restrictions in the freedoms that they experienced during the pandemic.

What was your position as a business owner? A during covet, did you must have come under pressure to sensor opinions on lockdowns vaccines, masking what? How do you respond? So our position .

is pretty great for IT where a neutral platform, we were helping governments to spread their message about the log done and mass. And we get dozens of governments who we really help uh, similar their information. But we also didn't want to restrict the voices that were critical of all these measures.

We thought IT made sense for this, posing views to polite and hopefully, you know, see some truth come out of those. And of course, we got criticize for that. But a looking back, I think IT was the right strain.

So you allowed people to voice doubts about the so called science throughout the through .

out the experience exactly during the pandemic I think were one of the few or maybe the only major social media platform that didn't take down accounts that were sceptical, uh, in relation to some of these measures.

So why are you not famous and treated as a hero in the nine states? Shouldn't be a parade in your honor if you're the only social media platform not to take down what turned out to be true or in to something and true more certainly more true than the cdc guidance. Mean why? Why weren't new times man of the year? Why isn't your face on the nego?

I will not expert in the U. S. politics. But to to be fair, you have now uh twitter or x yeah that the seemingly becoming more proof freedom of speech uh and I think IT is it's it's is a great development. And back to our earlier discussion about how all of this is developing in cycles, things are starting to change. IT seems .

so do you I mean, but in in some ways, elon buying twitter, sort of engel monopoly, but you still greet IT cheerfully. You're still in favorite of IT.

definitely. We will love the fact that a elon bow twitter, we thought IT was a great development for a number reasons. First reason is just innovation. You could see x doing trying lot of things. Some of them will turn out to be mistakes.

Some of them will work, but at least they're trying to innovate that something we didn't have outside of telegram in a few other companies in the industry for the last ten years were you saw from the big players, they would rather copy the proven models, the teachers that apps like telegram large and just scale them on a larger audience. This features would be a pail, real reflection of what we built. But this was the way those companies Operate.

celebrate. What x is trying to do is a in line with weird building. No innovation, trying different things, are trying to give power to the prayers, trying to get the good system economy going. Those are all exciting things, and I think we need more companies like that. I was I don't know if it's good for humanity that um spending so much time on twitter making IT Better but is definitely good for the social media.

When you see the other the guys are on these other companies, what do you do know them? And do you ever talk about freedom of speech? I mean, if you're running, you're into much you know, the answer, of course, if you don't want, but if you're in the mark archer.

I was met with mark more than ten years ago. I was still running V, K, and I told her them. I told mark and his colleagues about our, uh, APP platform.

We launched an APP platform, I think was two two thousand nine V, K. They were very interested who was an interesting meeting, and they ended up trying to copy not what we did, but what I told then we did a IT was funny. Um I remember he asking me whether we were planning to start something on the global, uh, basis, on the global level level 来 go， uh for international expansion. I said no and I asked him whether he was going to try to capture more of my domestic market where I was working out and he said no and we both ended up doing exactly that and two or three weeks I was i'm thinking I shouldn't .

go into business with mark socket bird.

I no comment.

People job that thank you very much is a great conversation. I appreciate what reading for you.

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