It should be noted that Durov does not criticize Russia, his country of citizenship and the center of much of his userbase.
The Russian internet is far more controlled than the Western internet, with penalties up to and including arrest and death for expressing the wrong views. Russia also is actively invading Europe and sponsoring vast network of troll accounts which poison the discourse on the internet in Western countries.
This does not make his argument incorrect but it is worth keeping the context in mind before getting too cynical about western systems. That cynicism is one the explicit goals of Russian propaganda.
Durov left Russia in 2014 after he refused fo cooperate with the authorities (they asked to hand over personal info about pro-Ukrainian groups on VK), saying:
>Unfortunately, it's impossible to run an online business in this country. I'm afraid there's no way back for me - especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities.
What I'm seeing here is that for a lot of liberal Russians (including Durov), the West was this ideal, beacon of freedom, and many are disappointed to see it moving in the same direction as Russia. For Russia, it's obvious that free speech doesn't exist there, nothing new to say.
And recently it was discovered that he regulary visited russia after 2014 and met there with government officials. Including having the Telegram blocking removed after one such visit
Exactly and what he writes about Germany is wrong:
> Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet
No you can criticize all you want. You just can’t insult them. Free speech is different in Germany than in the US. Insulting people isn’t covered by free speech.
Whether or not that is a good thing is up for debate, but Durov’s statement is plain wrong.
Sounds like a recipe for the powerful dehumanizing people using polite words and those being dehumanized being handcuffed in the range of legal responses they can make in return.
When you are some random person on social media, you aren't likely gonna be debating a policymaker or talking head. Not being allowed to express anger without risking legal penalties is cruel. I stand by that.
The answer is, unfortunately, yes. The problem is the court of public opinion can easily be swayed by insulting someone, and if that someone can not insult back, that's a political instrument that gives asymmetrical power to the current rulers.
> No one can say that your propaganda is too crude or low or brutal, or that it is not decent enough, for those are not the relevant criteria. Its purpose is not to be decent, or gentle, or weak, or modest; it is to be successful.
... avoiding losing C-level executives could very quickly become an exercise in corporate cost avoidance, as the expenses of additional layers of security cost more than a change in corporate behavior... where paying more attention to customers reduces shareholder risk in executive turnover.
Nor does he criticise the UAE where he moved to, where of course he gave up free speech for tax benefits. I don’t blame him of course, I’d be terrified to criticise the government if I lived there too.
Well, do you? Where does the cynicism against the political situation come from? I think europes reality is much better, than the poisoned discourse makes us believe.
I am in Germany and I don’t need troll farms to poison my worldview. It’s enough to go to the local school where swimming pool is closed, because there is no money. It’s enough to go to all hands meeting at work to get new location in best cost country presented. It’s enough to try finding specialized doctor and realizing, that my public health insurance allows me to see the doctor in April 2026. I just don’t think it’s the way it should be in a first world country. Obviously something does not work despite people actively voting in every election.
Yes, all of this is true. But it is also true that the poisoned discourse makes things look much worse than they really are.
To reframe it: changing these bad situations is easier than it seems. It’s not easy, but many people feel as if change were impossible.
I believe this feeling of hopelessness is one of the main reasons why political and financial fascists can rise. They yell that the world is falling apart and that they have the (final) solution. Russian bot farms amplify this narrative, helping massively to weaken democratic societies.
This is an information war and Europe has been losing it for about 10 to 20 years.
I don’t know if any change is possible. I definitely can’t repair school, nor make the Deutsche Bahn trains run on time. Health and retirement “insurance” are getting more and more expensive every year. The single thing I can try is to accumulate some wealth despite government squeezing me out. Then get some car and avoid dysfunctional public transportation. Pay doctors by myself and not through failing public health insurance. Buy rental real estate and don’t wait anything from failing retirement system.
There are just too many objective things that can be well measured. Grocery shopping bills, utility bills, payslips. Even job ads for hardware developers like me. I quit television as a teen and newspapers during 2014 Ukraine war. The west makes ruzzian troll farms easy life.
Does democracy still work? I often provoke German colleagues and ask who voted for 5 millions new immigrants into welfare system during last 10 years. Nobody gave me positive answer. So what’s happening? Voters obviously get what they don’t want. Nobody voted for falling apart infrastructure. I started thinking about offroad suspension and tires for my car. I regularly visit my older neighbors and have a chat, old people see the same. And have statistics. They remember the years when there was no train at all. When the train run every 4 hours, when the train came every 30 minutes and when chaos started 2 decades ago. Maybe there are enough internal factors that weaken so called democratic societies and ruzzian trolls are only very minor factor. Deindustrialization in Germany can be seen on plain sight and well paid positions will never come back: https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/news/mercedes-benz-v...
Edit: probably wrong link. Sprinter production goes to Poland. Apparently German production is too expensive.
Germany just has terrible demographics. Fill a country with old people and you get Germany, of course things are falling apart. It doesn’t mean democracy doesn’t work, it just means the elderly are voting for higher and higher pensions at the cost of everyone working.
I'm Danish, chat control has it's origin in a proposal from my politicians. It's been revoked because there was no support. The major reason it was revoked was because of the strong German stance against it. It's currently backfiring in the hands of the politicians who suggested it. In Denmarj we seem to often be on the wrong side of internet freedom, and I think we should all criticize that. Only it's not black and white, because we're also one of the most pro-free-speech countries in the world. I know the world is often turned black and white on the internet, but if you're always painting the black, then that doesn't help the debate.
I think that is what Pavel does. Look at how he mentions chat control, but not that it was turned down and revoked. Then directly goes on to criticize Germany (who shut down chat control) for being anti freedom. He doesn't say anything that is wrong. Due to their history, Germany does not allow you to say anything you want about their politicians, deny history or praise nazism. It's that same history that makes Germany such strong proponents for privacy though, because they've lived the Surveillance state before it was cool. That is what has turned Germany is a privacy haven on par with Sweden, but where does Pavel ever mention that?
For that is the main issue with people like Pavel. It's not that the message is wrong. The internet has become mainly controlled by a couple of SoMe companies which are controlled by the aristocracy. It's that he polarizes it, but only against the west. I get why he wouldn't criticize Russia even if he wanted to, but he's certainly not walking the walk, is he? The fact that he spreads the message on X just makes it even more hypocritical. (If you think that part about X is me being "woke", please keep in mind that Twitter banned Trump.)
Pavel can't be trusted in any way. Russia is at war with Europe, russians are living in a bloody dictatorship and there is zero freedom of speech in Russia. Yet his tweet is only about western democracies in Europe - exactly what you would expect from a Putin puppet.
Oh nice, so i'm sure he is defending our freedom by living in France as a french citizen like the rest of us where freedom of speech actually exists fur russian guys like him? But i forgot, he chose instead just another dictatorship in the middle east. I guess that makes him even more trustworthy.
It's covered in the interview. The Russian state backed off when they figured that the only way to ban Telegram is to also break large pieces of the country's digital infrastructure, because Telegram was using Cloudflare, Google Cloud, AWS, Hetzner address ranges for its proxies to evade blocking.
Now, Telegram is also an important part of military communication in Russia. Probably not that often for the chain-of-command, but there are dozens of channels that cover frontline news and war in details, and these somewhat independent media outlets are as important to the Russian government as they are to the CIA.
IIRC, Roskomsvoboda had a project to figure out the banned IPs and ranges, and mitigations were widely discussed on habr.ru and specialized forums. The whole story unrolled in real-time and publicly. I don't think there's any doubt about its veracity.
The Russian internet is far more controlled than the Western internet, with penalties up to and including arrest and death for expressing the wrong views. Russia also is actively invading Europe and sponsoring vast network of troll accounts which poison the discourse on the internet in Western countries.
This does not make his argument incorrect but it is worth keeping the context in mind before getting too cynical about western systems. That cynicism is one the explicit goals of Russian propaganda.