[erikj]

This is incorrect. The oligarchs took vk.com away from Pavel Durov (the founder of vk.com and later Telegram) by force with some help from FSB, then banished him from Russia. Both Pavel Durov and Telegram are now out of the reach of these oligarchs, and Durov has no desire to aid people who robbed and exiled him.

[ryanlol]

Do you work for the Durovs? It sounds like you might :)

https://twitter.com/bershidsky/status/910169626989953024

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/910186197598838784

https://theoutline.com/post/2348/what-isn-t-telegram-saying-...

Oddly enough, your exilee friend Pavel has been a regular sight in St. Petersburg despite supposedly eluding the reach of the Russian authorities https://tjournal.ru/52954-durov-back-in-ussr

He even assaulted someone in 2017 because they were trying to take a photo of him in St Petersburg https://lenta.ru/news/2017/03/20/durov/

>Durov has no desire to aid people who robbed and exiled him.

It seems strange to think that he'd have a choice.

And anyway, Telegram is designed in a manner which allows its operators to easily read ~99% of the conversations between users. The same is not at all true of Signal or Whatsapp. Do you think that's a coincidence?

[hnarn]

It's cute that you link to lenta.ru as if it's undoubtedly a reliable source. Wikipedia says:

"On March 12, 2014 the owner, Alexander Mamut, fired the Editor-in-Chief Galina Timchenko and replaced her with Alexey Goreslavsky. 39 employees out of the total 84, including Director-general Yuliya Minder, lost their jobs. This includes 32 writing journalists, all photo-editors (5 people) and 6 administrators. The employees of Lenta.ru issued a statement that the purpose of the move was to install a new Editor-in-Chief directly controlled by the Kremlin and turn the website into a propaganda tool. Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, referred to the move as a manifestation of censorship."

[ryanlol]

Welcome to Runet!

[hnarn]

I'm not sure what your point is, but to me this makes it more likely that this is an article made to smear Durov than anything else considering it's literally a government mouthpiece.