He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism from European democracies - this must be stopped immediately:
> Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures such as digital IDs (UK), online age checks (Australia), and mass scanning of private messages (EU).
> Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy.
> Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet.
This is not correct as far as I know. If Germany is persecuting someone for something written on the internet, that something is much worse than criticism. Words should still have meaning.
An embarrassing fiction, it was junk. More people are on VPNs now than were on the internet pre-2000
It's true there were ideas and principals in a wild west the younger generation will never know was the default. You could go out and have a battle with Injun's or see a lynching but it was 99.9% dust and hard work herding cows.
The internet now is a megacity, everything is amazing, there are roving gang wars to little hobbyists and anything else you can imagine.
> He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism
Yes Pavel and this is 100% correct.
China banned VPNs effectively, this will come to the West next. If the US falls there is no where to VPN to.
>Yes Pavel and this is 100% correct.
a lunge he happily helped support with telegram and vkontakte as long as the money rolled it. Poor rich guy.
The Internet truly was better when people had more control over their own experience in it. Now the modern equivalent of pop-up ads are on every blog begging you to sign up for their newsletter and you're severely restricted in how you can even interact with the handful of popular websites leftover.
Some things are better now, sure. But some are definitely worse with the control over information exposure that we've lost.
The opinion given about Germany leaves out a lot of the nuance. I think that Germany is taking a unique approach that actually seems to make sense:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros...
I would argue that the American approach to a more absolute form of freedom of speech, plus the manipulative potential of the internet, plus psychological differences that exist when humans socialize online compared to in person has made a really negative cocktail of societal harm.
The USA is sliding into authoritarianism in part because it explicitly allows grifters to spread outright lies and slander via their corporate platforms and there’s no recourse because of the first amendment.
News outlets like Fox News don’t have to even attempts to be news in their concept, they can go to court and claim that their programming is an opinion entertainment show and spread information they know to be lies. They’ve only really been caught in this scam legally once in paying out the Dominion civil defamation suit settlement and they only had to do that because they were defaming a specific company.
The US elected a literal internet troll as president. And that’s not a good thing.
I think there is something admirable in the approach Germany is taking, and as long as it is implemented well it is absolutely possible to balance free expression with protecting society from vitriol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tjournal_refugees/comments/1k3lc02/...
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.
I don’t need Russia to tell me to be cynical of the western political situation.
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.
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.
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.)
> 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.
It's not like by going for an ad hominem you automatically win back the argument.
Is it so hard to verbally destroy a person's stance on something without insulting the person itself?
Has insulting anyone ever stopped anything?
> 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.
From https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb54...
So just give up on trying to keep the powerful in check with laws?
No? Then what are you saying? Why not consider how this notion of banning "insult" is guaranteed to be abused?
Sarcasm aside, what kind of argument is that? And how is it related to what I'm saying?
Yeah, it scared the hell out of them: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unitedhealth-spent-1-7-millio...
... 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.
This belief could be characterized as "misguided optimism".
Plus is has 0 connection to any kind of discussion about "freeze peach".
Oh those snowflake politicians! When do they grow thick skin? /s
>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.
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.
Durov himself lives in an unfree country
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250619-france-soften...
But I think it’s hypocritical to talk about freedom of speech issues in Western Europe while ignoring similar or worse restrictions in China, Russia, or Dubai, where he lives.
It’s similar to Musk’s approach — when Twitter is shut down in Brazil, it’s a freedom of speech violation, but having a Tesla factory in China suddenly makes that problem disappear there.
As I understand it, Durov doesn’t agree with your statement — you can check point 5 of his 2014 manifesto [1]
[1] https://globalvoices.org/2014/03/13/pavel-durovs-seven-reaso...
That was before the Kremlin fully launched its repressive measures against the Internet, and before he was forced to leave Russia for refusing to cooperate with the authorities.
Bull. Shit. If you break the existing laws, by insulting or slandering someone, you might have to face the consequences.
But I guess it is easy to point the finger at Germany and conjure the specter of the fascists if you live in Dubai, come from Russia, and created 2 of the biggest troll-mills ever. Would not want to rattle the cage too much, would we.
> by insulting or slandering someone
That's a bit of a straw man isn't it?
The German government makes it very easy to point fingers at them: The German minister of economics and "vice president" (vice chancellor) had so much free time and capacity to sue more than 800 citizens! https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1493232/umfra...
The vice president of a G7 country suing old men because they called him a numbnut on the internet is ridiculous.
Especially if you see the hate that was sprewed at him at every single post, news, update or whatever, i completley understand. This has nothing to do with criticizing someone - Habeck actually has a good track record of sitting down with other people and talking with them, but stuff like death threats.
More background here at politico https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-robert-habeck-files-... this were massive attacks leading up to the european election not people unhappy with "Ze Greens".
Also, on the "old man calling him an idiot”:
<< Habeck authorized prosecutors to pursue the case for the insult against him by issuing what in German is known as a "Strafantrag." However, this is different from an individually-submitted criminal complaint to law enforcement authorities known as a "Strafanzeige," and could indicate that law enforcement had first invited or asked Habeck to press the charges. Prosecutors did not specify who had approached who first.
So, not Habeck going after him, but simply saying that its ok to pursue the inquiry.
<< The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
Yeah, that "old guy" seems like a real treat and not at all like an asshole right-wing dumbnut.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
The old guy was also not convicted, something the right-wingers found super cool.
For them, it's more about enabling micropayments. So far, the only successful micropayments system was advertising, and it's a real shame we couldn't build better.
You probably don't realize it, but multi-device support, group chats of tens of thousands of users, channels with millions of users and comments of said users. Attachments and history and search. And then a whole infrastructure for running bots and processing payments. And proxies to fight blocking attempts. All of these are either highly problematic or computationally intensive and practically infeasible with E2E on.
Otherwise, someone would have taken the opportunity and reimplemented Telegram on top of homomorphic encryption /s.
Small groups could likewise be supported.
I take the point that for large groups client fan out of the double ratchet doesn't scale. We now have MLS but we didn't. There's also an argument of how can you really keep a secret in an open group of a few thousand people.
But on a small, "personal" level, e2e could absolutely be done. Not doing so is a choice, one that conveniently ends with almost everyone's chats stored on servers somewhere.
I would go so far as to say I bet telegram is a goldmine for TLAs.
Try to sit through the 5 hours of interview with Carmack if you are a coder, or the interview with Aella, if you are more into humanities.
These two are his crown jewels, IMO.
Was fully nodding along, and this confused me. What is that supposed to mean?
Who?? What's he talking about?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po
[2] https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-stru...
But it's a fairly common far right talking point, and similar claims come up a lot in certain types of anti-Western propaganda. Perhaps Durov could have been influenced by that?
When the Microcomputers came, and everyone ignored mainframes, they decided to step back, and let everyone have their foolishness. It was far easier for their jobs if the let operating systems that trusted everything take over the market. The Soviets copied our moves, and made themselves vulnerable. They figured they would retain the institutional knowledge and wisdom, keeping their own internal systems secure by design.
But they didn't plan on retirements and changes of administration, and the end of the cold war. Once that shock happened, they didn't reconsider. They didn't reconsider again when the world became networked, and connectivity for almost everything became persistent. There were multiple points at which they could have changed course, quietly pushed systems that were secure by design, but they apparently haven't.
So now we're in a world where you can't trust anything newer than an IBM XT with dual floppy drives. Where firmware can be updated with persistent worms, making it permanently untrustworthy. Into this world, we all carry spying devices in our pockets and purses, that can be repurposed by any intelligence agency, or sufficiently motivated person for that matter, into tools of oppression.
I think that a sufficient shock might pull us back into rationality, and cause us to seek sane computing strategies we can trust, but I don't give that good odds at present, 5% or less.
We don't have privacy, and you'd have to be an old fool to actually speak your mind these days. We're falling right into the thing we feared the most when I was a kid, a repressive Soviet style oligarchy where you can't trust anyone. You especially can't trust any computing devices.
Pavel Durov's ancestors include a Red Army soldier who helped pave the way for Soviet control of Eastern Europe. While the content of his message about losing privacy has merit, the appeal to "tradition" and "forefathers" seems like he's speaking to a particular kind of audience.
Except they are not. Googling I came across about five, mostly calling for asylum seekers accommodation to be burned down. Arson was actually disapproved of even before twitter.
Durov's home country is murdering thousands in Ukraine though in the hope they they'll bend the knee to the invaders. I think that sort of stuff is more a threat to freedom.
You're the billionaire owner of Telegram. If you cared about these things you'd sell and invest in open standards or making our current standards suck less or be easier to use.
Cry me a river.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-stru...
There is plenty of evidence -- anyone who saays otherwise tell me and i will provide it unless hn bans me yet again for attempting to spread the truth.
for germany -- look up CJ Hopkins. free speech is a farce in europe and has been for decades.
Why?
Normies.
They were 'played' in C19 time - and they will be 'played' next time ... and EVERY next time.
There are just too many IGNORANT people out there that trust TV.
nialse•4mo ago
The difference is that what once was covert in the West is now out in the open. Anonymity enabled the troll culture, famously exploited by any and all bad faith actors in their favor. Control in terms of surveillance on metadata level is just a manner of having enough endpoints at your disposal for a nation state actor.
It was a nice illusion and the wake up is kind of harsh.
SilverElfin•4mo ago
Anonymity enabled honesty and free expression. FTFY.
nialse•4mo ago
phs318u•4mo ago
* I may be wearing rose-tinted glasses. It's been a very long time since I'd spend 4 hours a day reading and replying on various Usenet groups.
mlyle•4mo ago
Unfortunately, I don't see a path back to the kind of internet where we don't need anonymity so much.
anigbrowl•4mo ago
SilverElfin•4mo ago
This feels revisionist. The internet was almost entirely anonymous. Whether it was “required” or not is irrelevant. People could be honest and not fear censorship.
jrflowers•4mo ago
You will be blown away by stuff people post at eachother on facebook, the site where you use your real name
ljf•4mo ago
a. Not all people using Facebook are using their real name,
and
b. Not all Facebook accounts are real people
jrflowers•4mo ago
nialse•4mo ago
At the same time you are completely right! Troll culture has enabled an era of unhinged communication. Many people have lost the little decency they had. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not immune to it.
jrflowers•4mo ago
bfg_9k•4mo ago
And so what if it did? That's the price we collectively pay for a free internet.