Who’s Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, and what’s all the fuss about?

Bizarre lifestyle habits. A libertarian streak. Free speech absolutism and a middle finger to any kind of content moderation. Finally, an obsession with fathering children. And yet, it’s Pavel Durov, not Elon Musk, we’re talking about here.

It’s been a few days, but Durov, the boss and founder of Telegram, whose arrest in France on Saturday raised a global digital storm over free speech and alleged censorship, is finally out of jail.

He must pay a €5 million ($5.6M) deposit and cannot leave French territory. While placed under judicial supervision, he’ll need to show up at a French police station twice a week.

French authorities are officially investigating Durov on charges that he allowed rampant cybercriminal activity to take place on the app, which was falsely thought of as a secure and encrypted platform.

On Wednesday, the judge found grounds to formally investigate Durov on all charges for which he was initially arrested four days ago.

They include suspected complicity in running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, images of child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and fraud, as well as the refusal to communicate information to authorities, money laundering, and providing cryptographic services to criminals.

It’s all a bit weird, isn’t it? Among the social media titans, Durov is almost a hero – a brave warrior battling state censorship around the world. In fact, he himself likes to frame himself as the patron of the individual citizen against government snooping.

But what if the snooping is lawful and justified? His critics point out that Telegram is now full of all kinds of swindlers and crooks, mostly selling or trading illegal stuff.

In other words, if there’s a severe lack of moderation on Telegram, doesn’t it allow criminal activity to go on undeterred on the app? And in that case, isn’t the boss of the platform responsible?

French President Emmanuel Macron, commenting on the arrest for the first time, said that even though Paris is “deeply committed” to freedom of expression, “freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life.”

I have seen false information regarding France following the arrest of Pavel Durov.

France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so.

In a state governed by the rule of law,…

undefined Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 26, 2024

In order to find out why there is so much noise about the temporary arrest of Durov, it’s time to take a look at the personality and life of the guy himself. It’s probably more than fair to say that Durov is a lot of things to a lot of people.

Angered the Kremlin

Durov, 39, was born in the Soviet Union, moved to Italy when he was a 4-year-old but returned to Russia after the collapse of the communist empire in the early nineties.

Both Pavel and his older brother Nikolai were quite talented at maths from an early age. Durov said in a rare interview with right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson earlier this year: “We were both very passionate about coding and designing stuff.”

Ep. 94 The social media app Telegram has over 900 million users around the world. Its founder Pavel Durov sat down with us at his offices in Dubai for his first on-camera interview in almost a decade. pic.twitter.com/NEb3KzWOg8

undefined Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 16, 2024

Fresh out of uni, Durov built Vkontakte (VK), a Russian social media site that soon became popular – too popular for the Kremlin. The government was angered when Durov refused to hand over the private data of VK users after protesters began using the platform to organize demonstrations in neighboring Ukraine in 2013.

“We decided to refuse, and that didn’t go too well with the Russian government,” Durov told Carlson.

Under pressure, Durov began looking for a way out. He sold his shares in VK – now taken over by people close to the regime – and fled Russia in 2014. Like a true tech bro, he posted a picture of dolphins and a line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Good riddance? Not so fast: from Dubai, Durov turned his attention to Telegram, a messenger app, which he decided to make more attractive to users than alternatives such as WhatsApp.

He marketed Telegram as one of the most secure messaging platforms out there – even though, again, it’s not encrypted by default – and kept repeating that he would never share any kind of data with any government.

Soon, the number of Telegram users skyrocketed, and today, the platform, most influential in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics, is aiming to surpass one billion active monthly users.

Industry experts say Telegram is unique because it’s also a media platform: you can chat, but you can also post messages, view videos, and share clips. It’s like Facebook, X, and WhatsApp all in one.

A hero or an enabler of crimes?

In Russia, Telegram has also been a refuge for dissidents and media outlets that were blocked by the authorities under censorship laws.

At the same time, pro-war bloggers and propagandists are also enjoying unlimited freedoms on the platform, which is also the preferred means of official communication for many in the government.

Durov’s critics have long questioned how Telegram can operate so freely in Russia without having made concessions to the Kremlin. Durov himself consistently denies any agreement with the Kremlin.

However, in June, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab said that the Kremlin was utilizing Telegram for its own purposes – but it now faces the threat of losing control over user data.

To be fair, Telegram was briefly banned in Russia from 2018 to 2020, but we still don’t know why the ban was lifted, Andrei Soldatov, a prominent Russian expert on internet freedom, wrote this week.

“The Kremlin said Durov must not only ban ‘extremist content' but also wanted him to surrender Telegram’s encryption keys that would allow authorities to read private conversations. Telegram was unblocked in June 2020. Had Durov made some sort of deal with the Federal Security Service? We don’t know,” said Soldatov.

Besides, Moscow is now sort of working on Durov’s behalf and attempting to solve his legal troubles in France. However, Russia may simply want to use another opportunity to criticize alleged Western censorship.

Still, many critics are asking: Is Durov, whose fortune Forbes estimates to be around $15.5 billion, really a hero, or is he a sly entrepreneur who publicly defies Russia's authoritarian government but also opposes moderation and refuses to give access to data to democratic governments, as if the two models were comparable?

The platform attracts thousands of shady drug dealers, human traffickers, crypto crooks, and even pedophiles. They all fled tighter restrictions on rival platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, or YouTube.

After all, Megan Squire, the deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, has calculated that around 30,000 extremist groups operate on Telegram.

The platform attracts thousands of shady drug dealers, human traffickers, crypto crooks, and even pedophiles. They all fled tighter restrictions on rival platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, or YouTube.

“In Russia, Telegram is a safe haven from the government’s fight against civil society,” Russian opposition politician Maxim Katz said this week, summing up the situation quite sharply. “In Europe, Telegram is a safe haven for criminals.”

Russian Elon Musk

One must also be blind to not see how X, known and loved as Twitter before Elon Musk bought it, is beginning to look more and more like Telegram. Coincidence? Probably not.

Musk loves Durov and has called his arrest an attack on free speech. In multiple posts, he rages against alleged censorship in the European Union and vows to protect speech on X.

POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme https://t.co/OkZ6YS3u2P

undefined Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2024

Both Durov and Musk are libertarians, and both are running extremely lean operations. Musk has fired 80% of the staff at X, and Durov’s Telegram only has 30 employees and no Human Resources department.

They both also seem obsessed with fathering children. Musk has 11 known children with three different partners, and Durov said in July that he had fathered more than 100 kids thanks to sperm donations he had made over the past 15 years.

The difference is visibility. Musk is active on X, is never shy to throw out a comment or two about the issues of the day, and supports Donald Trump in the upcoming US presidential election.

Durov, on the other hand, is quite elusive. He rarely gives interviews and, with passports of four countries – Russia, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Saint Kitts and Nevis – in his pocket, has been living a life without borders for a decade.

For now, Durov will have to stay in France – at least until the next chapter of his current legal entanglement.