Pavel Durov’s laissez-faire attitude to regulation made messaging app Telegram into a giant and gave him a platform to clash with officials from Moscow to Brussels from his perch in Dubai. His decision to repeatedly ignore requests from governments to better moderate content on his platform reached a tipping point on August 24, when he was detained in France over allegations that Telegram failed to adequately combat crime on the app, including the spread of child sexual abuse material.
Telegram has been reluctant to remove all but the most violent content under Durov, who has a net worth of $9.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The 39-year-old has styled himself as a radical libertarian and cultivates a look riffing off of Keanu Reeves’ Neo character in The Matrix, usually sporting an all-black wardrobe.
Born in Russia and having spent much of his childhood in Italy, Durov is a citizen of France, Russia, the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the United Arab Emirates. He often documents his globetrotting life, recently posting pictures of his travels throughout Central Asia.
Despite the carefree image, Durov faces heightened pressure to monetise Telegram, which is free to use. Ahead of a $2.4 billion bond maturing in March 2026, the platform has been trying to make money off of its 900 million users. Durov’s arrest is all but certain to complicate efforts to take the company public, a route he has indicated he favours over selling it at valuations he claims are in excess of $30 billion.
It also sets up a battle over free speech, with X owner Elon Musk and former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden among those who have condemned the arrest.
Wide range of allegations
Durov is being interrogated as part of a case initiated by a cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office. Investigative judges handling the case are looking into a wide range of allegations, which include refusing to help authorities run legal wiretaps on suspects, enabling the sale of child sexual abuse material, and aiding and abetting drug trafficking.
In a statement posted to its platform, Telegram said it abides by EU laws and its content moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving”. Durov, the company added, “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe”.
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” Telegram’s post said. “Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all.”
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Durov could not be reached for comment. The UAE asked French officials for access to Durov, and is “closely following the case”, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement on August 27.
Earlier, the Russian embassy in France had demanded access to Durov, who was born in St Petersburg and lived in Russia until 2013. Russian government officials have expressed outrage at Durov’s detention, with some calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double standard on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows among Kremlin critics: In 2018 Russian authorities themselves tried to block Telegram but failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.
Lightning rod
Telegram has long been a lightning rod for controversy. European Union officials argue it fuels disinformation, including conspiracy theories that sparked recent anti-immigrant rioting in the UK and allegations that Russian intelligence services used the site to recruit agents. The EU has looked at how the platform reports its number of users to see if it can apply its Digital Services Act to force Durov to better moderate content.
Durov has repeatedly ignored requests from democratic and authoritarian governments alike to better moderate content on his platform. European Union officials argue Telegram fuels disinformation and promotes pro-Kremlin propaganda. Russia, for its part, tried and failed to block the app after it refused to turn over user messages.
Launched in 2013 by Durov and his brother Nikolai, Telegram releases very little financial information, making pinning down its value more difficult than many other social media and messaging platforms. Telegram says that Pavel Durov supports the app “financially and ideologically while Nikolai’s input is technological”. Durov is the sole owner of the company, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
A unique social network
Telegram allows for one-on-one conversations, group chats, and large “channels” that let people broadcast messages to subscribers. Unlike rivals such as Meta’s WhatsApp, Telegram’s group chats allow as many as 2,00,000 people, compared to a maximum of 1,024 for WhatsApp. Experts have raised concerns that misinformation spreads easily in group chats of that size.
Telegram offers users end-to-end encryption for their communications, but—contrary to a popular misconception—this feature is not on by default. Users have to switch on the option. It also does not work with group chats. That contrasts with rivals Signal and Facebook Messenger, where chats are encrypted end-to-end by default. “That means that Telegram can access their contents,” said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizenlab. “Only Telegram’s opt-in ‘secret chat’ feature is end-to-end encrypted, which would prevent Telegram from accessing the chat contents.”
Demonstrators with a icon stylised painting depicting Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov protest against the blocking of the popular messaging app in Russia, during a May Day rally in St Petersburg on May 1, 2018. | Photo Credit: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP
Telegram is unique among major social media networks in that it does not use algorithms to promote content to its users. Instead, users subscribe to channels and see posts and videos in chronological order. While that lets the platform argue it only serves users what they choose to see, bad actors have exploited the platform’s structure by posting inflammatory content in mainstream channels and then bringing new followers into more radicalised chat communities.
Telegram says it has more than 950 million active users. It is widely used in France as a messaging tool, including by some officials in the presidential palace and the ministry behind the investigation into Durov. But French investigators have also found the app has been used by Islamic extremists and drug traffickers.
Compared to other messaging platforms, Telegram is “less secure (and) more lax in terms of policy and detection of illegal content,” said David Thiel, a Stanford University researcher, who has investigated the use of online platforms for child exploitation, at its Internet Observatory. In addition, Telegram “appears basically unresponsive to law enforcement,” Thiel said, adding that messaging service WhatsApp “submitted over 1.3 million CyberTipline reports in 2023 (and) Telegram submits none.”
The site played a central role in coordinating violent demonstrations in August in the UK where anti-migrant demonstrators clashed with police and threatened immigrant communities, said Moustafa Ayad, an executive director at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks extremism. Others have used Telegram to disseminate bomb-making instructions and guides on how to shoot at US power stations as part of plans to cause havoc.
In 2022, Germany issued fines of 5.125 million euros ($5 million at the time) against the operators of Telegram for failing to comply with German law with respect to reporting illegal content. Brazil temporarily suspended Telegram in 2023 over its failure to surrender data on neo-Nazi activity related to a police inquiry into school shootings in November.
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Before Telegram, Durov founded Facebook-lookalike VKontakte in 2006, which grew to Russia’s biggest social network thanks in part to the easy sharing of pirated movies and music. In 2012, he and a colleague threw 5,000 ruble notes—worth over $150 each at the time—from their office window in central St Petersburg. Durov also took a stand against Russia’s KGB successor, the Federal Security Service, when it sought to get VKontakte to shut down protest groups that formed in 2011.
Durov ultimately was forced to sell his stake in VKontakte. He claims he left Russia after refusing to turn over data on Ukrainian users during the country’s 2013 Maidan protests, which led to the overthrow of its pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych.
(with inputs from agencies)
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