Pavel Durov, as you can see, could have made a living from his face.
In 2006, at the age of 22, he founded a social networking site called VKontakte (VK for short), which accidentally became the first in Russia and earned him billions of dollars.
After getting rich, he could have had a house, a car, a yacht, but he lived a simple and boring life, not smoking, drinking, eating vegetarian every day, no scandals.
Some say he is the “Russian version of Zuckerberg”, while others say this is “an exaggeration of his business achievements and an underestimation of his personal achievements”.
He is at the forefront of technology and is fluent in four languages, but loves to read Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.
He is always dressed in black, supposedly as a tribute to The Matrix, but instead of playing CosPlay, he lives his life as a realistic version of Neo.
The Matrix” (Matrix) the main character Neo
In the movie, Neo ate the red pill representing freedom, was blinded, but thus gained strength.
In reality, Durov fought hard against the government, was forced to sell his assets, and drifted around, but achieved a communication tool that can fight against regulation: Telegram.
What kind of a man is Durov? There is no doubt that he is a capricious and rebellious person, how exactly is he capricious? We can start from an interesting incident in 2012.
- “I am not interested in money”
On April 27, 2012, in St. Petersburg, Russia, a paper airplane suddenly flew out of the window of the top floor of a luxurious building, hovered in the air several times, and then stopped steadily by a passer-by’s shoe.
The passerby picked it up and saw that there was a 5,000-ruble bill (worth nearly 1,000 yuan at the time) inside, and then he looked up and saw that the second and third paper planes had also flown out, hovering and floating across the road.
The day was the anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg, the street was already busy, more and more people were attracted by the paper planes, from all directions to the intersection, the traffic was at a standstill.
A few heads stuck out of the window, and one of them was recognized as Pavel Durov, founder of Russia’s largest social networking site VK, who was throwing money down, laughing while doing so.
Hey, the happiness of the rich is so plain and boring.
On the road, a man swung his fist into another man’s nose, blood flowed, people flocked in one direction like dogs picking up Frisbees, eyes staring straight up at paper airplanes in the air, and others simply climbed up traffic lights and hung like a monkey on a tree.
Seeing the situation, a few people in Durov put away their smiles and closed the windows, but the scene had been recorded by people, and they threw more than 20 paper airplanes that day.
It made the news all over the world and many people called him out online for showing off his wealth and causing chaos. “…… I’m so ashamed of Durov!” an eyewitness said in the news.
Durov later explained the motive for throwing the money online, saying it was a bonus for a vice president who said he had no interest in money and that it was just a by-product of changing the world.
Probably something like this
Durov was very happy to hear that (he’s one of those people himself) and then said, “Sure, since you don’t like money, let’s throw it away?”
The two really started throwing the money, and Durov again proposed to clip it in the paper airplane, which led to the scene above. And they stopped, Durov said, because “people (for money) are becoming animals.”
Unlike the image of the big money-spreading tycoon shown on camera at the time, Durov was actually in a very bad situation at that time, and the crisis was approaching him step by step.
In fact, that was his last public appearance in Russia, just over a year before he was forced to hand over the reins and flee the country.
He had offended the one person he should not have offended – Vladimir Putin.
- “Iron fist” vs. “hard neck”
The essence of the conflict between Durov and Putin is quite simple: the iron-fisted president wants to take control of the Russian Internet, and Durov won’t let him do it with a stiff neck.
Durov often misses the Russian Internet before 2011, when he said, “In that Russian unregulated Internet market, VK was a liberal’s paradise, you could do anything.”
In his eyes, 2011 was a watershed year when the Russian Internet moved from the “era of freedom” to the “era of regulation”.
What happened around 2011?
Let’s shift our gaze for a moment from Russia to the southwest and land in Tunisia, a small country in the Middle East.
In 2010, due to the local economic downturn, a 26-year-old young man, Mohamed Bouaguiji, was unable to find a job and took to the streets to set up a street stall to earn a living, only to be roughed up by police and officials who not only confiscated the goods he had borrowed to buy, but also slapped, spat on and even rounded him up.
In order to survive, he went to the local government office to protest, but was again refused. In desperation, he set fire to the gasoline he was carrying and collapsed in front of the government.
The fire killed a young man and ignited the long-standing anger of Tunisians against high unemployment, soaring prices and government corruption.
His thin body fell gently like the last snowflake on top of a shaking snow mountain, which collapsed in an instant.
Clashes between local residents and the Tunisian National Guard soon spread to other cities, and massive social unrest broke out across Tunisia.
The end result of this riot was the fall of the Tunisian government and the flight of President Ben Ali to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Western media had a collective orgasm and gave the movement a name: the Arab Spring. They saw it as a revolutionary wave, where freedom and democracy had descended and a new Middle East was being born.
As if there was an invisible gravitational pull, Tunisia pushed over the first domino, and the rest of the Arab world soon experienced a chain reaction, with people taking to the streets to demand the overthrow of their own countries’ original regimes.
In December 2010, the Tunisian regime fell, the Algerian regime fell; the following January, the Lebanese government was reshuffled, the Jordanian government was reshuffled, the Omani government was reshuffled …… Demonstrations broke out in Mauritania, Bugti, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other countries ……
But the spring did not come, the “Arab Spring” became the “Arab Winter”.
To cite three typical examples: Syria, Egypt and Yemen.
After the resignation of Syria’s prime minister and speaker of parliament, a civil war soon broke out and the terrorist group Islamic State took advantage of the situation to declare a state by merging the occupied areas in Iraq and Syria. After that, Syria was plunged into a melee between government forces, the FSA, ISIS, the Nusra Front, and Kurdish forces. To this day, peace and stability remain a luxury for the Syrian people.
After the fall of Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, the newly elected Morsi government was overthrown by a military coup, and supporters of both sides broke out into massive riots …… armed clearances, bloody clashes, and terrorist attacks.
After the fall of Yemen’s Saleh regime, the new Hadi regime was overthrown by armed again, al-Qaeda took advantage of the opportunity to take over a number of towns and cities, into a three-way chaos.
A pot of boiling porridge, the lid of the political pressure cooker was violently lifted and the result was a mess. I’m afraid this is something those involved in the original protest rally never expected.
Zoom out and you will see a picture of the situation of protests and unrest.
Image intercepted from Wikipedia
Bring the camera closer and it’s a picture of families torn apart by the fire, children who have lost their parents, parents who have lost their children.
The 3-year-old refugee who shocked the world in 2015
“The Arab Spring not only caused more than $600 billion in economic damage, but also forced tens of millions of refugees to flee their war-torn homelands and flood into Europe.
To this day, the refugee issue remains one of the EU’s biggest headaches.
Many European and Central and Eastern European countries that actively supported the Arab Spring in the name of “human rights” and “humanitarianism” are now reluctant to accept refugees, leaving a large number of refugees homeless and with nowhere to go.
That’s a bit of a stretch, so let’s get back to Russia. …… What does this have to do with the tightening of Internet regulation that began in Russia in 2011?
The Arab Spring opened the eyes of many countries, including Russia, to the impact and threat of the Internet on national security and national ideology.
Throughout the Arab Spring, social media played a huge role in fueling it; they were like a digester on which shouting, grievances, and all kinds of extremist ideas collided and fermented and were ignited. (Think of all the extremist ideas and spewers you encounter online)
Many young people in the Middle East, exposed to the Western world through the Internet, took to the streets and demanded that their countries copy the Western model, which eventually led to a serious “misfit” and tragedy.
“Before the Arab Spring, the Russian government had good control over traditional media such as radio, TV and paper, but the Internet was largely left to its own devices. As a result, the Internet became the most convenient and fastest-spreading place to air grievances, and voices of opposition often gathered on the Internet.
In the second half of 2011, Russia significantly tightened its control over the two largest local social networking sites, VK and OD.
But, as it happens, VK’s head, Durov, is an extreme liberal.
When he was in school, he used to hack the school’s website and put up the names of teachers he hated with the message “death” to annoy them half to death.
When you open Durov’s VK page, he is always dressed in black, supposedly in tribute to Neo of The Matrix, who happens to be the head of the rebellion in the film (the so-called “savior”).
Durov’s VK homepage
Careful viewers will find that Pavel Durov’s name has three Chinese characters below it: 道德經 – this guy is a believer in Lao Tzu, and believes in “rule by doing nothing”.
How far does he go? He doesn’t even care about pirated content.
In the early days, VK was filled with all kinds of pirated music and video content, and Durov turned a blind eye to this, “do nothing but rule” well.
So much so that in 2011, the Recording Academy of America ranked VK as the second most illegal music library in the world, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative directly called it “the most important piracy database”.
The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
- The presidential election controversy
In the second half of 2011, the conflict between Durov and the Kremlin escalated.
At that time, the Russian State Duma (parliamentary) elections, the then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin clearly said: next year I will be the president, the current president Medvedev to be the prime minister, what do you think?
Not pictured
It turns out that three years ago, that is, in 2008, has been eight years as president of Putin facing abdication, according to the Russian Constitution, the president can not serve two terms, so Putin decided to step down, let a close comrade promoted Medvedev to run for president, himself as prime minister.
Medvedev was not long in office when he changed the constitution, extending the presidential term from four to six years, but his term did not count, starting with the next one.
In 2011, when Vladimir Putin explicitly said that he wanted to “change the king’s car”, people then reacted, good guys, you two are playing a “duo” ah, the 2008 amendment to the Constitution is also tailored for Putin, right?
Putin said publicly, yes, Medvedev and I have discussed the “king’s car” four years ago, but only now announced. However, this is only a small, immature proposal, and ultimately, of course, the citizens of the country will have to vote on whether to agree.
At the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, social protests broke out in Russia, and social platforms on the Internet became the main battleground for the protesters, with cartoons satirizing Putin’s “personal elections” circulating on VK and various rumors and conspiracy theories emerging.
The most exaggerated is that in February 2012, a video of Putin’s trial appeared on the Russian Internet, showing him with his head down, being tried in a barricaded courtroom full of people.
The video was one minute long, and the voice-over accused him of “crimes”: theft of state property, abuse of power, participation in the preparation of terrorist attacks against the people’s government, etc. …… finally sentenced “Putin” to 13 and a half years in prison.
Although it has been pointed out that the video is a fake (of course it is), the forger intercepted footage of Putin’s participation in the population register in 2010 and edited it into the scenes of another Russian trial.
However, this fake video broke the Russian “circle of friends” and was reproduced on many websites.
The documents snowballed on Durov’s desk, and the government issued numerous instructions to VK to block the activities of various opponents.
Durov didn’t take the requests seriously, saying he didn’t want to take sides, purely for business reasons, “fearing that obeying the requests would give traffic to rivals Facebook and Twitter.”
Among the anti-(gao) Putin(shi)(qing) crowd at the time was a flag-waver named Alexei Navalny.
The man is Russia’s most famous Internet vlogger, who first became famous when he exposed online the embezzlement of $4 billion in public funds by the head of a Russian state project, and then quickly became a representative figure in Russia’s online fight against corruption.
Since 2009, he has been happily criticizing the corruption of the government of the Russian Federation and opposing Putin in increasingly large moves.
For example, he not only called the United Russia party, of which Putin is the chairman, “a party of cheating” in his blog, but also said directly in an interview with the British media that “unless Putin falls, [corruption] will not change.”
After the Russian State Duma election, he also claimed online that the election was fraudulent and led a protest demonstration in Moscow, which resulted in his arrest by police and 15-day detention.
On the same day, Durov received an email from the Kremlin asking him to cooperate in seizing Alexei Navalny’s VK account and to provide relevant account data.
Durov replied with a photo of a dog with its tongue out and wearing a blue sweatshirt, fearing that the other party would not be able to read it, and added: “This is my reply.”
That night, recalled Durov, a team of heavily armed camouflage uniforms with firearms raided the apartment where Durov lived.
He closed the door tightly at the time and shouted at them, and they left after a standoff of more than an hour. That night, Durov lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, awake as if from a dream. For the first time, he realized, “It’s time to think about the future, both for the individual and for the company.”
To accept or to resist, that was the question.
On May 7, 2012, Vladimir Putin was sworn in as president, and three days later, Russia held a Victory Day parade to celebrate the 67th anniversary of victory in the anti-fascist war.
Durov posted a VK message, “67 years ago, Stalin successfully resisted Hitler and defended his right to oppress the Soviet people.”
Netizens called Durov a dog, but he still had a tough mouth: “I think that message was right, it was just that the timing of what was said (on Victory Day) was not quite right ……” He said, “Stalin killed more people than Hitler, and I hate both men equally.”
After another week or so, Durov, not sure what to think, posted an article online, “What should be done to make Russia a leader of the 21st century?
This political manifesto is sprawling with hundreds of words, depicting the ideal state in his mind, and I’ll translate a few of them here for you to feel.
“The best legislative initiative is no legislative initiative.” (A bit like “rule by doing nothing”)
“Abolish all taxes and restrictions on the information sector.” (Typical extreme cyber-liberalism)
“Create fully open, transparent and distributed jury trials. All local judges and civil servants would be directly elected by the people, not appointed by officials.” (A bit of “decentralization”)
“Allow 100% free circulation of gold and any digital currency secured by gold …… The 21st century is the era of free money, not national currencies” (this is an attempt to kill the Russian ruble system)
“Eliminate residence permits, passports, entry visas and other basic rules of feudalism …… 21st century when a century without feudal borders.”
……
This reminds me of another thing: huawei once had a graduate of Peking University, just entered the company felt that the company’s business strategy has problems, wrote a letter of ten thousand words to Ren Zhengfei, Ren Zhengfei saw and approved: this person if there is mental illness, it is recommended to send to the hospital for treatment, if not, it is recommended to dismiss.
It is estimated that if Putin sees Durov’s political declaration, he will also want to “recommend dismissal” of Durov.
- Arm twist but not the thigh
After that, more and more strange things happened to Durov. For example, he was inexplicably summoned by the Prosecutor General’s Office.
In May 2013, VK was blacklisted and seized by Russian regulators without warning, leading to a suspension of service for several hours, though it was later restored.
Durov also felt his was sidelined at the company. When he realized that his company’s shares were being bought by Putin’s allies, he posted a photo of his middle finger online.
Durov likes the middle finger, and so does Neo of The Matrix. In the interrogation room, Agent Smith wants to make a “deal”, as long as Neo confesses to the big black fat “Murphys”, he will write off his record.
Neo said, “I have a good deal for you too, how about I give you the middle finger and you let me make the call?
Around 2014, civil unrest broke out in Ukraine and Russian troops marched into the Crimean peninsula, after which Crimea seceded from Ukraine by referendum and joined Russia. One day, Durov received another email asking him to hand over information about a Ukrainian politician.
Durov said this would be difficult, his mother is Ukrainian and his father is Russian, saying, “These two countries are probably the two closest relatives in the family of nations.” — he didn’t want to take either side.
So he returned with two more pictures of puppies.
Perhaps tired of being pressured repeatedly and tossed around, he simply posted a copy of the security service’s order document online for the group to comment on.
Shortly after, Durov was accused of driving a white Mercedes-Benz that crushed the foot of a police officer in a hit-and-run, as evidenced by video.
Durov vehemently denied, “That video is fake.” He said, I did not touch the car, and …… I can not fucking drive ah ……
When the police rushed to his company to arrest people, only to find that he has long lost contact and run away.
The two co-founders of VK suddenly announced that they had sold 48% of their shares to an investment firm called UnitedCapitalPartner a few days after Durov lost contact with them.
Durov was shocked, he did not expect that the other party had this trick, he had been kept in the dark.
Although the head of the investment company Serpovich said that the transaction did not have the government to sell interference, and did not exert any pressure. But some media pointed out that Serpovich is a director of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil giant, whose chairman is Putin’s closest ally.
After that deal, Durov still has 52 percent of the company’s voting rights.
The “United Capital Partners” continued to make trouble with Durov after taking a stake in VK, for example, by urging him to hurry up the advertising business to make a profit, putting pressure on his financial and performance, and another shareholder http://Mail.ru也趁机争取更大权益, letting internal conflicts gradually fester.
Maybe they wanted to force Durov to show up, but he didn’t show up in the end.
In February 2014, he wrote online.
“What you own, sooner or later, will also hold you hostage, during the last few years I was trying to unload various possessions, giving up and selling everything I had, from furniture to properties to companies, and in order to achieve this ideal I had to give up the biggest piece of my assets, 12% of VK shares, and I am glad that I recently achieved my goal and sold the shares to my friend Ivan Tavlin. “
He announced his run.
In fact, this so-called friend of Durov, Ivan Tavrin, could eventually get involved with the Kremlin.
Behind the telecom company MegaFon, which he helms, is controlled by Russia’s richest man Usmanov, who is also an ally of Putin.
But Durov had no choice, he says, “I was lucky enough to sell out.”
He knew he could have been in a far worse state of affairs – his great-grandparents were persecuted by Stalin, his grandfather was decorated three times in World War II and still sent to the Gulag labor camp.
Perhaps it was a cold and windy morning when a man in black stepped onto the gangway of a plane and, as he took off, looked back at his hometown through the window for the last time.
- To be free or to be at peace?
The world is complex, not only black and white, right or wrong, good and bad.
Although it seems that Durov was “sacked” very aggrieved, but the Kremlin to strengthen control of the Internet, in fact, there is an irrefutable reason: anti-terrorism.
It was discovered that Durov was sidelined just in time for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Sochi is located in the most southwestern frontier of the Russian Federation, and the Caucasus region where it is located used to have a nickname: Eurasian powder keg.
During that time, the Sochi Winter Olympics were indeed shrouded in a haze of terrorism.
About three weeks before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, a radical group in Russia’s North Caucasus posted a video online: “If the Sochi Winter Olympics take place, we will give you a gift …… And, tourists visiting Russia at that time will likewise receive a gift. “
Living in a peaceful and stable country and era, we may not have a strong perception of terrorist attacks. So here is an insert of a real event that took place in Moscow in 2010 to give you a taste of what terrorism is like in Russia.
At about 7:50 a.m. on March 29, 2010, journalist Antonova was carrying her handbag and catching the subway to work as usual, and the crowd was bustling into the carriage, and everything was as usual.” Boom – “a loud sound deafening, see the smoke, she reacted to the explosion.
A carriage blew up. Above the Lubyanka station, where the explosion took place, was the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service, the center of Russia’s most powerful secret service.
Police, firefighters and paramedics rushed in from all directions, and people fled frantically down stairs and walkways. People were covered in dust, constantly screaming, some with torn clothes, and Antonova even saw one man with bits of flesh stuck to his shoulder.
Subway entrance, one body after another was carried out, the scene was extremely sad atmosphere.
Three minutes later, a second explosion occurred at the “Culture Park” subway station. A few minutes later, a third one occurred at the “Peace Street” station.
On the same day, according to the report of the head of the Russian Federal Security Service to the President, the explosion at the Lubyanka station was about 3 pounds of TNT, and two female suicide attackers strapped the bombs to their bodies, killing 40 people and injuring nearly 100 others.
The attacks were linked to the North Caucasus region.
At the time, a senior Russian media personality, Rynik, disclosed, “Russian police should have known in advance that there would be a terrorist incident in Moscow, as there have been heavy security patrols on the streets of Moscow for the past 5-6 days.” But for various reasons, it was not prevented in the end.
Immediately afterwards Rynik added that the incident was shocking but not so much as to cause panic among the population, “we have seen this kind of thing a lot.”
In the evening, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev came to the subway station to lay flowers and mourn the victims of the day’s terrorist attack.
The next day, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a public statement, “We know that they are hiding in the shadows, and we must pull these plotters out of the gutter and expose them to the light of day; this is a matter of dignity for law enforcement agencies, and it must be done.”
On the third day, the Caucasus Emirate and leader of the resistance’s Caucasus Front posted a film online admitting to being the mastermind of the bombings in retaliation for the Russian Federation and warning that more attacks would follow.
In the film, he said, “Two special operations on March 29 have eliminated the backstabbers and said hello to the Federal Security Service, both of which I ordered, and those who today condemned the act and accused me of terrorism, to whom I showed my teeth and smiled ……”
Within a week, on March 31, April 1, April 4, and April 5, a number of bombings occurred in the southwestern Russian krai in quick succession, in what officials suspected was a continuation of the Moscow subway bombings.
Nine months later, on January 24, 2011, at least 20 people were killed in another suicide bombing at Domodedovo Airport.
–.
All of these reasons add up to why the Kremlin wants to control social media. At least, not with an ultra-liberal in charge of its own country’s largest social networking site.
In this story, no one has a choice.
- Zion in the real world (Zion)
After leaving Russia, Durov began his second-hand plan.
In the northern part of the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean, there is a country called the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, with a population of about 60,000. Durov spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in a sugar factory, get citizenship, and get visa-free access to 124 countries or territories around the world, including Schengen, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Brazil, and so on.
He then raised $300 million in cash from a Swiss bank. Although he did not announce how much he sold his 12% VK shares for, outside estimates are between $400 and $500 million.
In August 2013, a communication tool called Telegram was launched.
Telegram is said to have been inspired by the armed raid in 2012.
When the police first raided Durov’s house, he pulled out his phone in a hurry and dialed his brother’s number.
The so-called “end-to-end” encryption is like sending a locked letter, which is opened by a unique key, so that no one can peek at the contents, including the carrier and the communication system provider.
The key to end-to-end encryption is the encrypted communication protocol, that is, how strong the “lock” is.
Telegram’s encrypted communication protocol, MTProto, was developed by Pavel Durov’s own brother, Nikolai Durov.
His brother is the head of VK’s technical team, a talented programmer + mathematician who has participated in international Olympiads three times, taking home three gold medals, and four times in international informatics (computer) competitions, cutting down one gold and three silvers. The addition of his brother gave Telegram the capital to fight against the government and hackers to decipher it.
They secretly registered the company in the United States and the United Kingdom, rented an office space in Buffalo, New York, and secretly contacted some loyal and highly skilled employees of VK to recruit them to the United States.
In the movie “The Matrix”, those who woke up from the illusionary world created by Matrix formed a resistance group called Zion, hoping to wake up more and more people to the so-called “free and real” world and eventually destroy Matrix.
In reality, Telegram is like Durov’s Zion.
When Durov was asked by Russia about his next mysterious project, he posted a motion picture from the movie “The Social Network” in which Facebook president Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) is shown in a photo. Tim Blake) gives the middle finger to investors.
He’s still the same teenager he once was, without a hint of change.
Image taken from the movie “The Social Network
- Users skyrocketed
Telegram was launched less than six months ago, and one day in February 2014, the number of downloads skyrocketed, adding more than 8 million users a day at the most dramatic point.
The reason is that the first day of the data surge, Facebook announced the $19 billion acquisition of communication software WhatsApp.
But what does this have to do with the surge in Telegram users? Why did Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp cause Telegram’s users to skyrocket?
It’s another story from 2013.
In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA outsourced employee, opened up to the media about the U.S. government’s plan to monitor the world.
The official name of this program is “”US-984XN””, there are two main sources of data, one from “Upstream”, that is, directly on the Internet backbone communication network fiber optic cable installation splitter, copy the content inside; the other from “Prism (PRISM)”, that is, from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Apple, Facebook and other large Internet servers directly collected.
After Snowden exposed the Prism program, the eyes of the world fell on him.
After a brief stopover in Hong Kong, China, he pretended to go to Moscow, Russia, for a connecting flight to Havana, Cuba, and then to Venezuela. on June 24, Ecuador’s foreign minister also confirmed on social media sites that Snowden had sought political asylum with them.
But in fact, he was not even on the Moscow flight to Cuba, and it became a mystery for a while.
In early July, Putin acknowledged that Snowden had asked Russia for political asylum, and his response was, “If he wants to go somewhere and have someone take over, then please. If he wants to stay here – on one condition: he should stop hurting our American partners, no matter how strange that is coming from me.”
Upon learning Snowden was in Russia, Durov immediately made an online post publicly soliciting Snowden to work for Telegram, criticizing the U.S. for “betraying the principles it built itself on” and expressing pride in his homeland.
Although Snowden declined the job offer, Durov always had a high opinion of Snowden. He later told the media.
“Snowden is my hero, we’re the same age, in a sense , I think fighting the NSA is the war of our generation.”
That’s why Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp later caused the seemingly unrelated Telegram user base to skyrocket.
- Free America, drink tea every day
Durov had thought that the United States was “free”, but he arrived a little disappointed.
Within a week, U.S. government agencies visited twice, first to entice, then to threaten, trying to buy them off.
The FBI, NSA, CIA and others must not live in their homes?
Every time he entered the country, Durov was detained and routinely questioned by FBI agents; sometimes he was about to board a plane when the agents came out of nowhere to “chat” with him, asking about telegram, such as where the company’s base is, how Telegram works? How to stay in touch in the future, etc.
In May 2016, Durov was flying from Europe to San Francisco for Google’s annual I/O developer conference when FBI agents showed up at 8 a.m. at the house he had rented through Airbnb.
“How did they know I was staying here? Traced my cell phone card? Tracked me from the airport? Or did they get the information from the taxi App? I don’t know.” Durov said.
After a few basic words, the agents got right to the point: “We want to create a data exchange channel where telegram can help us when a terrorist threat occurs by handing over data on specific users.”
The agents even took out a document that looked like a court order and showed it to him, saying to him.
“We have great respect for your values of privacy and cryptography, and we respect what you’re trying to do. But this is about terrorism, and this is a very serious issue, and we have a responsibility to protect society ……”
Durov, who has dealt with a number of people from the Russian Federal Security Service while in Russia, was still shocked.
“In Russia, the FSB (Russian Federal State Security Service) people I had contact with were not very good, moderately competent. In the U.S., the people who questioned me were very competent, they spoke multiple languages and had obviously done their research, knew what to ask, and were at a very high level …… of law enforcement efficiency.”
The agents didn’t just pester Durov, they also approached at least one of telegram’s employees.
In a coffee shop, they began by asking the engineer about Telegram’s technical architecture and how the encryption algorithm works, and after listening to the engineer’s praise, then said they wanted the developer to provide “confidential paid consulting services” at a price of about tens of thousands of dollars.
When the engineer refused, the FBI asked the engineer not to disclose the conversation, especially to his boss. “Please don’t tell Pavel Durov, this is a secret between us.”
The engineer said OK and went back and told Durov right away.
“We pay our engineers very well, they are millionaires and will not accept such a bribe.” Durov said with a smile.
- The days of the four seas
To get rid of the harassment of the U.S. agents, Durov simply fled the United States with his team and ran all over the world, booking B&Bs on the Internet and changing cities every other day.
He often posted photos of his workplace online, like a travel blogger. Let’s say this one in Venice.
This one is from his office in Paris, France.
Traveling the world and working at the same time may seem like an enviable life, but he always wanted to have a more secure base to work from.
He will recruit online and ask people to help him find a suitable base.
Intercepted from the web, translated by Youdao Dictionary
Unlike most other messaging apps, Telegram’s servers are located in several different jurisdictions to prevent them from being swept away.
From the beginning, Telegram did not intend to get rich.
Despite millions of dollars of server overhead each month, it doesn’t push any ads and relies entirely on donations. Of course, the most significant donor is Durov himself. According to his vision, in the future, if Telegram has other income, it will be able to maintain a break-even.
He calculated that he has a few billion dollars in his pocket, enough to last a long time.
Durov didn’t do Telegram for money either. He once said that when he started to become rich, he went to see the mansions and yachts of other rich Russians and realized that this was not the life he wanted, and that he found it more interesting to change the world than to make lots and lots of money.
He became a vegetarian, abstained from appetite and strictly controlled everything that could be addictive, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, sugar, tea, energy drinks, fast food, coffee, soda, TV or anything else like that and so on.
At one point, he even had the challenge of drinking only water and not eating anything for a period of time, quite a bit of a Taoist priest’s abstinence.
“Biochemically speaking, alcohol and nicotine, like cocaine and marijuana are drugs. These drug dealers’ compulsive advertising campaigns are not half as tempting to me.” Durov says.
He believes that “addiction affects the mind” and that “there is no future for a society based on self-poisoning, when we can change the world we live in through creativity, self-improvement and hard work. ……”
He was extremely self-disciplined, insisted on waking up early and getting close to nature, he always looked for places to live where there were mountains or water, and immediately went for a wild swim when he arrived at a place.
During his wanderings, he also does not forget to have some “interactions” with the Kremlin.
In 2017, Putin went to Siberia for a fishing vacation and the media took some photos and videos to show his tough guy style.
This group of photos fell into the eyes of Durov, he thinks he has a good body, launched a “bare-chested challenge” on the Internet, calling on Russians to sunbathe bare-chested, not allowed to repair the picture.
The netizens have responded.
- Who is safer?
Perhaps because of the lessons learned from VK, Telegram refused any investment, and Google’s CEO reportedly discussed a $1 billion acquisition with him. He replied that he would not sell even if he gave any amount.
He would often post articles on the Internet attacking his competitors’ “unclean asses”.
For example, he would say, “In some countries, Telegram is blocked, but WhatsApp works.” Then he adds, “Law enforcement agencies don’t like message encryption, forcing app developers to build in backdoor vulnerabilities. I know this because they have approached us as well.”
He criticized WhatsApp’s client code for not being open source, saying that it could be hanging on to the sheep’s head, claiming to use some kind of encryption technology that doesn’t actually work.
Snowden once publicly recommended people to use an encrypted communication software called Signal online, and criticized Telegram as insecure and unsuitable for ordinary people, and Durov would run to him for half a day to argue with him.
Snowden: “I think by default it [Telegram] is not as good as WhatsApp and is dangerous for lay people.”
Durov: And have you considered that most WhatsApp users back up their chats in plain text on their Google or Apple cloud drives? (And these cloud drives are censored and monitored by security agencies)
Durov will also emphasize that Signal has financial backing with the U.S. government behind it.
In short, no one is convinced.
- left and right dilemma
Terrorist organizations have given a thumbs up to Telegram.
They often use Telegram’s encrypted chat feature to plan attacks and use the public channel (group chat) feature to promote and recruit lone wolf (solo) terrorists.
These include al-Qaeda, one of the world’s UN-designated terrorist organizations, and the Islamic State, which even al-Qaeda has identified as a terrorist organization.
This is something that Durov is well aware of, as Telegram is often criticized online by the media for aiding terrorism.
Durov would laugh at himself online like this, “And I don’t know why, but this new passport photo of me is especially good for my media friends to put in their articles to describe terrorists who use Telegram.”
But he has a different take on terrorism than the usual suspects.
“At the end of the day, the privacy thing is more important than the fear we have in our minds about bad things like terrorism. ISIS will always find a different way to communicate.”
It’s true that “security is valuable, privacy is more valuable, and if you want to be free, you can leave both behind.”
He explained, “Emotions aside, if you think about the threat of terrorism statistically, it doesn’t exist, and you’re a thousand times more likely to slip and fall to your death in a room than you are to die in a terrorist attack.”
A journalist named John disagreed with him: Isn’t it because security services in various countries have collected critical information through data that they have greatly prevented more terrorist attacks? Your years are quiet because someone is always carrying the weight behind them!
For his part, Durov argues that the few incidents of terrorism in the West are not entirely because governments are fighting them well, but because there are so few in the first place.
“It’s like the pharmaceutical industry wants us to buy their drugs to stay healthy, but I never take anything produced by pharmaceutical companies to remain healthy. We shouldn’t put too much faith in their advertising – they always want us to believe that the reason it’s safe is solely because of their actions.”
That being said, Durov compromised.
In November 2015, Telegram removed nearly 250 related broadcast channels and blocked related accounts due to frequent use by Islamic State-related groups, and continues to remove nearly 100 similar channels every day.
He does not support terrorism, but simply resents the invasion of privacy by security agencies in the name of fighting terrorist organizations.
On April 3, 2017, in St. Petersburg, Russia, a carriage exploded in a tunnel, killing 16 people and injuring more than 50 in another suicide bombing. Unfortunately, another homemade bomb planted on the “Uprising Square” was discovered in time.
It is not known whether the terrorists who committed the attack in Durov’s hometown used Telegram to communicate with each other.
That month, Russia officially announced that it was banning Telegram, blocking the service directly from the carrier level and asking Google and Apple to take Telegram off the app store.
The Russian Federal Security Service’s claim that they provided six numbers and asked Durov for the key to decrypt Telegram account messages was rejected. Durov responded by saying, “I suggest you cut off the Internet.”
People gathered in Lubyanka Square and threw paper planes at the Russian Security Service building to protest the authorities’ blocking of Telegram, and 12 people were detained.
Members of Russian band “Pussy Riot” detained
On April 22, Durov responded online: “If you live in Russia and support a free Internet, please fly a paper airplane out of your window at 7 p.m. tonight. Pick it up an hour later – and remember, today is also Earth Day. I’d like to thank all those who participated in the #digitalprotest movement ……”
Three months later, perhaps Durov figured something out and compromised a half-step: Telegram changed its privacy policy and will cooperate with court requests for the user’s IP, phone number, and other data if law enforcement units can prove that a specific identity is a terrorist.
In addition to terrorist groups, people also like to make yellow on Telegram.
In March 2020, the “Room N” incident broke out in South Korea, where the perpetrators created multiple chat rooms on Telegram with names like “Room 1” and “Room 2,” so they were collectively called “Room N.” Tens of thousands of people were on these rooms.
Tens of thousands of people posted and watched pornographic and sexually explicit content, including forcing victims to carve words into their bodies, drink urine and eat shit, involving a large number of minors.
After the story came to light, netizens flooded Durov’s comment section to demand answers.
There are many sex offenders on Telegram, and Durov must have been aware of them.
As he did with terrorism, Durov is again in a dilemma and will have to face a choice sooner or later.
- Freedom
There is a little story about Durov that I forgot to tell.
In 2018, Telegram issued its own digital currency, Gram, and blockchain platform, TON. 6 years ago, in that political manifesto, Durov advocated the need to abolish the ruble, support digital currencies, and decentralize, and 6 years later he began to practice what he had originally thought.
Thanks to the fame of Durov and Telegram, $1.7 billion in start-up capital was quickly raised.
However, the project was called off by the US federal government a year later, presumably on the grounds that the illegal currency was disrupting the US financial markets or something like that.
Not only was he not allowed to issue the digital currency in the US, but also in other countries, on the grounds that the American people might buy it.
Eventually Durov had to announce the shutdown of the TON project, and he posted an online article raging against the hegemony of U.S. policymakers.
“The United States can use its control over the U.S. dollar and the global financial system to close any bank or bank account in the world, and can use its control over Apple and Google to remove apps from the App Store and Google Play. Therefore, other countries do not have full sovereignty over what is allowed on their territory. Unfortunately, 96 percent of the world’s population, where we live in other countries, depends on the elected decision makers of the 4 percent of the population that lives in the United States.”
On the same day, Gram’s digital currency futures fell more than 97 percent, and many investors said they would sue Durov for their losses.
At this point, as we unfold Durov’s life, we find that many stories point to the same set of logic.
That he meant well by spreading money, but caused people to violently loot and bleed their heads.
That he did not want to engage in political struggle, but the strugglers made VK the main front and involved him in it.
he had political ideas and wanted to make his country stronger, but was forced to flee Russia
he waved the flag for freedom, but inadvertently gave shelter to terrorists, criminals
He wants to make a decentralized currency, but ignores the fact that there are many people who really just want to get rich and cut leeks, and don’t care about the ideal of “decentralization”.
Durov may be a person with no bad intentions, stubborn, advocating freedom and independent thinking, but the world is ultimately complex, politics is tough, people’s hearts are unpredictable, and the struggle is cruel.
In his autobiography, Durov wrote: “I am not fighting for freedom, but only using my own existence to prove that freedom has not disappeared.
He must have had an “ideal country” in his heart, just like the rebel group called “Zion” in “Matrix”, who woke up from the dream created by Matrix and lived a life of extreme hardship and simplicity, eating snotty food every day, just to fight against falsehood and be their true masters.
But the problem is, Durov will not hesitate to choose the red pill, others may not.
The villain “Cypher” was also initially saved by Murphy, and is also a fighter for the truth, but he spent nine years trying to understand a truth.
References.
The Rebel Hacker Putin Banned: Telegram Founder Durov. Geek Movie
The 4% Hegemony: A Short Biography of the Durov Brothers”.
The man who dares to call out Putin, telegram founder Durov, his tough life doesn’t need explanation”. Conflux Chinese Community
The real fighting people, dare to extend the middle finger to Putin”. Redfoo. Covered rice story
Telegram Founder: Why Did the TON End? . The new block of coins
‘He sent a tweet saying, “Stalin resisted Hitler and defended his right to oppress the Soviet people”‘ . John Thornhill
How the politics-by-app hustle conquered all”. Yasha Levine.
Social network VK changes hands: A look at how Putin controls Russia’s FB”. The Verge
The Matrix” screenshots from Youku. Ultra HD viewing
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