Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, we have a lot of features like that when we use this art to allow people to express themselves
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And most people don't even know about these features.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't know about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The other application of the same technology is reactions on Telegram because we made it a goal
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
to make sure that people feel joy when they just send you a like.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Something so trivial as just adding a like to a message should be an action that you want to perform again and again and again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So in 2013, when we were launching Telegram,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
we were aware of the serious issue with privacy that Edward Snowden made very clear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And we thought, yes, we're designing this product in a way that is already extremely secure, but we want to make sure that not even we can access user messages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And we understood very clearly that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
a bunch of people who were born in Russia don't necessarily inspire trust.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So that's why we made Telegram open source.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So all our apps have been open, available on GitHub since 2013.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then we added end-to-end encryption in our secret chats, which
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
WhatsApp copied a few years after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
One year and three months ahead, they just started to test it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They rolled it out, I think, 2016, which is three years after us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the only reason I think the rest of the industry had to do it is because we set the standards.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was incredibly important back in the day and at the same time we realized certain limitations of end-to-end encryption.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, first of all, don't be afraid to be contrarian.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So within that design, that architecture, you can't support very large chat communities with consistent persistent chat histories.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can't support huge one-to-many channels.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You'd have issues with maintaining
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
bots that have lots of incoming messages multiple device support becomes tricky people will end up losing some of the documents they share so we also saw a lot of issues and we ended up having this sort of hybrid experience where depending on your use case and your requirements you can choose the level of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Set your own rules.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
encryption that we want to have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Secondly, if you feel you need to drink, there must be some problem you're trying to conceal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, and secret chats are not just end-to-end encrypted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are certain limitations that are both the feature and the bug.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, you can't screenshot them, you can't forward any document, any message from them, which is not necessarily something you need when you're trying to get some work done and you're just communicating with your team on a project.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's something that, some fear you're not ready to confront.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it became very clear to us that there are different needs here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if you try to combine both in one type of chat, you will end up losing a lot of utility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You know, we at Telegram, we don't use any
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
collaboration tool for teamwork.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We used Telegram to build Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we felt instantly when we were trying to switch to, say, secret chats to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
share large documents and try to get work done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was just not adapted for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At the same time, if you were really paranoid, you think, you know, I don't want to be screenshotted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't want to have any leaks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't even trust Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I only trust code.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And secret chats are the best option.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you have to address this fear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I believe it is the most secure means of communication today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you need reproducible builds in order to verify that the app really does what it claims, really encrypts data in a way that it is described on its website.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For that, you need to make your apps open source for any researchers to have a look at it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If there is a good-looking girl you're afraid to approach, get rid of this fear, approach her, practice, do it again and again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Telegram has been open source since 2013.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Apps like WhatsApp have never been open source, so you don't really know what they're doing and how exactly they encrypt your messages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What's important here though is to understand whether the version of the app that you download from the App Store corresponds exactly to the source code that you can view on GitHub.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And for that you need reproducible builds.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
As you said, Telegram is the only popular messaging app that does that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We allow people to make sure, both on Android and the IRS, that the source code of Telegram on GitHub and the app you're actually using is the same app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think it's incredibly important, not just to gain people's trust, but just to stay transparent and open about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I make this claim that Telegram's secret chats are the most secure way
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
way of communicating, I really mean it, because I haven't seen any fact contradicting this claim.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's pretty banal, but this advice works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At least among the popular messaging apps, you say WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, none of them have reproducible builds on both iOS and Android.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
None of them had, at least at the same level, put so much effort into making sure that the algorithms that you use in order to encrypt data are not algorithms that have been handed to you by some agency in order to create a honeypot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At least from what I know about our competitors, I don't think they went through the same process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It does make it more secure because if Snowden's relations taught us anything, it's that very often open source tools, modules, libraries that are used by everybody ended up having certain flaws and security issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And very often people are trying to escape something in their lives with alcohol.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
that make your software vulnerable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's also a way to make sure you're doing things the most efficient way possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it's extremely difficult to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You really have to have exceptional talent in your team to achieve this level of thoroughness, to go to a low level of coding that allows you to recreate from scratch database engines, web servers, entire programming languages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
because the programming language we use on the back end to develop the API for the client apps is also entirely built by our team.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What is it they're trying to escape?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, I wouldn't say we completely independent from that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We use Linux on the back end.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's no way of avoiding it for us at the moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What is this problem?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But for the most part, we are much more self-reliant than most other apps.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to get to the bottom of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, the main lesson is not everything what it seems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you would discover, and this is something I found quite shocking at the time, that a lot of people who you thought were security and cryptography experts ended up being agents of the NSA in one way or the other, promoting flawed encryption standards.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
your mind is trying to tell you something valuable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you wouldn't end up discovering that your government that was supposed to be limited in how it can surveil its people actually doesn't consider itself that limited.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that was very valuable for the world to understand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And instead of addressing it directly, you are flooding it in alcohol, which is sort of a spiritual painkiller, but works only temporarily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I guess it also can be a lesson demonstrated that we humans don't get their balance right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it responded, but it overreacted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It ended up in deroding certain basic rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy, because the government always wants to increase its powers, and the government always tries to do it at the expense of citizens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have the situation when the cure is worse than the disease.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think it was incredibly brave to do what Edward did,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't get to work with him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Whoever see him in person, we keep in touch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We sometimes communicate, but we're not close.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I still, I think what he did is laudable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I hope someday we meet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think they should be equally afraid of or equally not afraid of, in a way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's not that this intelligence service can kill you and the other can't kill you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I guess they all can kill me, one way or the other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it's a matter of whether I'm afraid of death.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That would be a very bold statement, but I proved to be quite stress resilient.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's not that you don't have fear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't think there is anything at this point that can happen to change the way I am.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you have to pay the debt with interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So in 2018, Telegram started to become popular.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In Iran, people used telegrams to protest against the government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They had these huge channels that they would use to organize
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
the protests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And eventually the government couldn't keep up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
invested a lot in coming up with their own messaging app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They had several teams competing for the title of the national Iranian messaging app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
All these apps failed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People still preferred Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Interestingly, Iran banned Telegram, but WhatsApp wasn't banned.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For me, not at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or at least they unbanned WhatsApp soon after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I've been always ready to stand my ground and say no when I feel something's not right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At the same time, starting in mid-2017 or late-2017, Russia demanded that Telegram hands them the encryption keys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They thought these things exist, something that would allow them to read messages of every person on Telegram, or at least every person on Telegram in Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And we told them, it's impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you have to ban us, ban us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is what they ended up doing in spring 2018.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that was quite fun because they were trying to block our IP addresses, but we were prepared for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And we came up with this technology that allowed us to rotate IP addresses, replacing them with new ones every time the sensor blocks our existing addresses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then it was completely automated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We had millions of IP addresses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We would be burning through them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
we set up this movement called digital resistance when system administrators and engineers all around the world, both inside and outside Russia, could set up their own proxy servers and their own IP addresses for Telegram to rely on in order to bypass censorship.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's extraordinary how easily we humans are affected by what we perceive as majority.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We ended up spending, I think, millions of dollars on that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And as a result,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
the censor got crazy there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They would ban IP addresses and larger subnets of IP addresses and huge subnets, which resulted in a weird situation where parts of the country's infrastructure started to go down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People were trying to pay for groceries in supermarkets and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Nothing would work because the Russian censor blocked too many IP addresses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And some of the subnets were used to host other unrelated services.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Even some Russian social networks and media got affected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Banks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So they had to start being more selective in how they combat our anti-censorship tools.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The biggest resistance we got at the time was from Apple.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Apple didn't allow us to update Telegram in the App Store, saying for at least four weeks that we have to come to an agreement with Russia first.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because nobody since ancient times, since millions of years ago, wants to be left out by the tribe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We said it's not possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They said, we will allow you to push your update for Telegram worldwide, except for Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We didn't want to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I almost lost hope.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At some point, I said, you know, maybe this is the only way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe we should leave the Russian market.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Stop allowing users from Russia to download the app from the App Store, which would mean it's over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We helped organize certain protests in defense of Telegram and privacy and freedom of speech in 2018 in Moscow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There was hilarious people flying paper airplanes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I saw that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at some point I decided I have to make a statement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I have to say that Apple sided with the censor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That we're trying to do the right thing here, but without Apple, we can't do much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then New York Times picked it up with the picture of the protesters flying paper airplanes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Apple was criticized in that story.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I thought, well, Apple should probably come back to the right side of history here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We are scared that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I waited for one day and two days in the meantime since we've been unable to update telegram for more than a month it started to fall apart because the new version of ios came out
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it made the old versions of Telegram obsolete.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We won't become accepted anymore, which thousands and millions of years ago meant we're going to starve to death.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Some features that used to work stopped working.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And users all over the world started to suffer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People that had nothing to do with Russia from other parts of the world experienced issues with Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it was really serious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I said to my team, you know what, if by 6 p.m.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
today, I think it was a Friday,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Nothing changes and Apple doesn't allow us to push the version of Telegram through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Let's just forget about the Russian market.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Let's keep going because the rest of the world is more important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's sad, but what can we do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
magically, 15 minutes to the time I was planning to remove Telegram from the Russian app store in order to proceed globally, Apple reached out to us and said, it's okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
keep playing this hide-and-seek game with the sensor, bypassing censorship through digital resistance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In Iran, it was a little bit different because we realized it would have been too expensive to try to come up with all these IP addresses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in addition, it was...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
not clear whether we wouldn't be in violation of the sanctions regime.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we have to consciously fight this inclination to be agreeable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we did something else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We created an economic incentive for people who would set up proxy servers for Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Any person, say an Iranian engineer, could come up with a proxy server, distribute its address among users in Iran, and whoever connected through the proxy of this person would be able to see a pinned chat, an ad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
placed there by the system administrator, the owner of the proxy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is how you can monetize your proxy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it created this market, which resulted in Iranians fixing their own problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And as a result, we kept millions or maybe tens of millions of Iranian users
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Up until this day, I think Telegram is still banned in Iran today, but we probably have something like 50 million people relying on Telegram from that country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People find a way around.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
with everything that the majority imposes on you because it's quite clear that many things that the majority, many activities the majority is engaging in are not bringing you any good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, this is something I never talked about publicly because I didn't want people to freak out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Particularly at the time, it was spring 2018.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We were trying to raise funds for TON, a blockchain project, working with all kinds of VCs and investors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In the meantime, we had a couple of countries trying to ban Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it was exactly the best moment for me to start sharing anything related to my personal health.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I never fall ill.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I believe I have perfect health.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I very rarely have headaches.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
or bad cough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't take pills because I don't have to take pills.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that was the only instant in my life when I think I was dying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I came back home, opened the door of my townhouse, the place I rented.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I had this weird neighbor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And one hour after, when I was already in my bed, so I was living alone, I felt very bad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But while I was going there, I felt that functions of my body started to switch off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
First, the eyesight and hearing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then I had difficulty breathing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's a difficult thing to explain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But one thing I was certain about is, yeah, this is it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, this is it because I couldn't breathe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I couldn't see anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was very painful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think it's over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I thought, well, I had a good life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I managed to accomplish a few things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then I collapsed on the floor, but I don't remember it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I found myself on the floor the next day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was already bright.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Blood vessels were broken all over my body.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Something like this never happened to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I couldn't walk for two weeks after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I stayed at my place and I decided not to tell most of my team about it because, again, I didn't want them to worry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it was tough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's the fear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's quite irrational if you think about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Interestingly, not at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If anything, I felt even more free after that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was something that made a lot of sense 20,000 years ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I had an experience when I assumed something bad is going to happen to me a few years before that, also in relation to my work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
After you survive something like this, you feel like you're living on bonus time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So, in a way, you died a long time ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And every...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
New day you get is a gift.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is a bonus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The first of these instances was in December 2011.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
December 2011, you had this huge protest on the streets of Moscow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
it makes zero sense today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They didn't trust in the integrity of the election results to the state Duma in Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I remember in 2011, I still lived in Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
running VK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There was no Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if you think about it, if you do the same thing everybody else around you is doing, you don't have any competitive advantage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So the government demanded that we take down the opposition groups of Navalny from VK that had hundreds of thousands of members and that were used to organize this protest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I very publicly refused to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I just decided it's not the right thing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People have the right to assemble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I mocked the prosecutor who handed me that demand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I put out a scan of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And next to it
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
a photo of a dog in a hoodie with its tongue out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I said, this is my official response to the Prosecutor's Congress to ban opposition groups.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was very funny at the moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then I had armed policemen trying to get into my apartment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I asked myself, did I make the right choice?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I came to the conclusion that I made the right choice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I asked myself, what would be the next thing that would logically follow from this?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you don't get to become outstanding at some point in your life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I realized they're probably going to put me in prison.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So what am I going to do about it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I asked myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I told myself, I'm going to starve myself to death.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's something that probably many men have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're ready to die for other people or certain principles they strongly believe in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not alone here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I guess Edward Snowden was ready to die as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or some other people like Assange.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Also, at that moment, I realized there's no way to communicate securely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I need to tell my brother what's going on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're probably going after him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
How do I tell him without betraying him?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because in 2011...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Remember, WhatsApp was already there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think they launched it in 2009.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it had zero encryption.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
All messages were plain text in transit, meaning that even your system administrator, let alone your carrier, had access to your messages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was only after Telegram started this push for encryption that these other apps suddenly remembered that privacy wasn't their DNA, as WhatsApp founders famously stated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it must have been a dormant gene in 2011.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In 2011, there was no way to send a message in a secure way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I also told myself, if I'm going to survive this, I'm definitely launching a secure messaging app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Somehow, it ended up not being too bad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was summoned to the prosecutor, answered some silly questions, fewer questions that I had to answer more recently in the French investigation case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it was the beginning of the end.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was clear that there's no way I'm going to be allowed to run VK the way I wanted it to run.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Differently.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and realized any day I can leave the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I kept running VK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I knew my days in Russia were numbered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It can definitely happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
As you said, there are certain indications.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There have been certain test attempts to partially ban it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Telegram is no longer accessible in parts of Russia, such as Dagestan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it would be incredibly sad if Russia restores its attempts to ban Telegram because currently
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's been used by its population for all kinds of purposes, not just personal communication or economic business activities, but also it's the only platform which allows the Russian people to access independent sources of information.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you think about
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
media outlets such as BBC or any other non-Russian sources of information, they're only accessible in Russia through Telegram in the form of Telegram channels.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Their websites are banned, some other social media sites are banned,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And as you said, there are indications that Russia is planning to migrate users from existing messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram to their own homegrown tool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So obviously in order to contribute to the society you're in, to the economy of the country you live in, you have to do something that is valuable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which would, of course, be fully transparent to the government and wouldn't allow voices independent from the government to express themselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's certainly an alarming trend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We see these attempts in countries that are not famous for protecting freedom of speech, but also increasingly in countries that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
have been known to protect freedoms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this creates this vicious circle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because, in a way, European countries trying to fight freedom of speech under pretexts that sound legitimate, such as combating misinformation or election interference, they create precedents and they legitimize
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
restrictions to freedom of speech, which then in turn be used by authoritarian regimes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they would say in places like China or Iran that they're not doing anything different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
go in line with the mainstream narrative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's sad because one of the things that makes our life interesting is this abundance of different viewpoints, of different people that we get to experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You limit the freedom of people, you inevitably decelerate economic growth, level of happiness, the way people can
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
contribute to the society, the way people can express themselves, I personally think it would be a huge mistake to ban a tool like Telegram in any country, particularly a large country such as Russia, because the Russian people are incredibly talented and resilient people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But if you're doing something that everybody else is doing anyway, what's the value of it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They are among the first to start utilizing some of these recent innovations that Telegram implements.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They are the early adopters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I say them and also the Americans, perhaps other people from Eastern Europe like Ukrainians and Southeast Asians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They are among the first people to start using any new edition that we launch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're incredibly hungry for innovation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're protecting freedom of speech.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Now, it sounds easier than it is done to do something that nobody else is doing, because we humans are surrounded by all kinds of information, which makes us want to copy what we are perceiving.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
it's not a way to make a lot of friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because you would inevitably find yourself in a situation where you would be protecting the freedom of the opposition to the current government in any country to express themselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The initial reaction and a very basic instinctive reaction of any government would be to say, oh, our position shouldn't be trusted and allowed to express themselves because they're
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
actually are agents of some foreign rival, a geopolitical force that wants to destroy our country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is something that every authoritarian regime in history used.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You take Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany, Maoist China, they'd always use the same trick that say we need to limit your freedom of speech because
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
These people who are masquerading as opposition are actually the agents of this other country that wants to take over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's why, dear citizens, forget about your freedoms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And now increasingly you see similar attempts in free countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The initial instinct from, say, President Macron's team when they're confronted with some footage
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
for example, the footage of his wife slapping him, would be to say it's all fake Russian imagery, something that is inaccurate, something that is misinformation or interference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then when they are confronted with more information, they have to refine the narrative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So when...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You find yourself in a situation that you're running this platform like Telegram, and then you protect the freedom to express ideas that don't go in line with the mainstream narrative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At the same time, there are so many areas which you can explore that have nothing to do with the information you receive on a daily basis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You often find yourself in this crossfire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
when the forces in power will say that you must be working with some foreign government that they don't like.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Inevitably, they would say that, oh, if you're protecting these voices, it's not right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They love you when you're protecting the freedom of speech in a country that is far from them, or better yet, in a country that is their geopolitical rival.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They praise you for that, but then they have this bipolar attitude when you do the same in their own country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they say, no, no, no, no, no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We love you for protecting freedom of speech, but not here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Not in my backyard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We don't need it here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're all right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have free press.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you find yourself in this weird spot that Ukrainians say you work for the Russians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The Russians say you work for the Ukrainians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And all this schizophrenia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
is something that we had to deal with for some time because it's a very easy way to attack you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it's extremely important to curate the information sources that you have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At some point you don't understand where it is coming from.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is it our competitors?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We must give credit to our competitors if it's their invention to launch these kind of rumors because at a certain point they must have realized they can't compete
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
technologically, on the product side, so they must do something like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or it's just governments launching these rumors, trying to discredit the platform, trying to scare their citizens away from it, because they understand that their power and grip of their own country is in danger, as long as they allow a pro-freedom platform to operate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So that you wouldn't be somebody who is left to the will of AI-based algorithmic feed telling you what's important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think people are smart.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Every time I meet somebody from one of these countries you mentioned, in real life, people recognize me in the street.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Say here in Dubai, they come over, they seem incredibly grateful and understanding.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
the propaganda in each of these countries would tell them a number of things but they learned to discount it that's why they're so happy that telegram exists is because the way they can
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
understand the world around them is to receive conflicting mutually exclusive viewpoints from sources that hate each other and try to understand what really is true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because there is no such thing as an unbiased source of information.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When the war in Ukraine started in 2022,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I didn't want Telegram to be used as a tool for war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I said, and I posted it publicly, I suggested maybe we should just suspend the activity of all politics-related channels in both countries for the time of the war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe we shouldn't have channels in these two countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They told me, both people in Ukraine and in Russia, that I don't get to babysit them and decide for them
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
what sources of information that they have to be granted access to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So that you end up consuming the same information, the same stuff, the same memes, the same news as everybody else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They are grown-ups that can make these decisions for themselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They understand that there is a lot of propaganda.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They learn to see through this propaganda.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They learn to be able to tell truth from lie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in this time of war, it was particularly valuable for them to receive as much information as possible, because their relatives, their friends,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
who are getting affected and are still getting affected, they want to understand what's going on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At that moment, I realized people are smart.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People get it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People can see through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you ask most people in any of these countries, do you agree that access to Telegram should be restricted for whatever reason, they would say no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But rather, you should be proactive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They need a voice and they need a place to share their opinion securely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You should deliberately try to set a goal, an area that you want to explore, and then actively search information that is relevant to this field so that one day you can become the world's number one expert in this field.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't think there is such thing as a negative personal trait.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In most cases, our bad traits and our good traits are the same trait, or at least have the same source.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, there are some extreme examples, but I'd say 99% of people, if you analyze their character, their bravery can be seen in recklessness in other situations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Like, depending on circumstances,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you would see exactly the same personality trait, and it would be either a good thing or a bad thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because humanity is perfect as a whole, and each of us is different for a reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have evolved to be different, to complement each other's abilities, so that together we're invincible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And even if you take a person as complicated as Elon, I believe that certain traits that Elon demonstrates, that people criticize about him, are also the sources of his strength.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, his emotionality is derived from the fact that he cares about issues deeply.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he's willing to start as many wars and as many fights as it takes to change the world in the direction that he thinks is right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He also seems to be able to extract motivation from all these wars and personal conflicts, which is, again, not something to be underestimated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At a certain point in the life of a successful entrepreneur, the question of motivation starts to be the primary question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If we are talking about the richest person in the world and the most famous entrepreneur in the world, they have to wonder, how does he motivate himself?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
a war on X, debating certain issues, or becoming personal with other CEOs, criticizing them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
being non-agreeable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Actually, it's one of the main traits of a successful entrepreneur, not agreeing with things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And every time somebody like Elon, but there is no somebody like Elon, it's just Elon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's not that difficult to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think, at least from the entrepreneurs I know, and I personally interacted with, he's unique in the sense that he keeps launching new things, running them in parallel, and he doesn't seem to be stretched too thin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, some people think he is, but
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
he manages to still demonstrate success in all or most of his endeavors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So again, you can criticize Elon for being emotional, but would he be the same person without this?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I doubt that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to just remain consistent because nobody else is trying to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, and one of the necessary character features to enable that is to be ready to be unpleasant.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to be ready to insult some people if their work is inferior.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to be ready to fire them without remorse.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So in order to be an efficient, a great entrepreneur and enrich the world of innovations, you have to do unpleasant things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Everybody else is just reading the same news and discussing the same news every day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Most people will shy away from it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And Elon is a great example of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
One dirham is one third of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But this way they don't get to have a competitive advantage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, we had to innovate a lot in order to reach a point where we are profitable without having to resort to dubious business activities involving exploiting personal data of users, something that most of our competitors do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because money has never been the primary goal, at least not for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I sold the remaining share of my first company, I had to do it below market price because I didn't leave Russia completely without any pressures, you know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I reinvested the vast majority of everything in Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Telegram is an operation that is losing money for me personally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't extract more from Telegram than I invested in it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I never sold a single share.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I also didn't want to sell Telegram, so how do you reach a point when you're profitable without sacrificing your values?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
One of the ideas we explored was a subscription model, but only for certain additional features.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We wanted to keep all the existing features free and just add more business-related tools or tools for advanced users that they would have to pay for, say $4 or $5 a month.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was quite unprecedented at the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It wasn't considered a viable option for messaging apps to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We launched the premium subscriptions for Telegram in 2022, and now we have over 15 million paid subscribers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is some very significant recurring revenue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We would receive more than half a billion dollars from premium subscriptions alone this year.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's growing fast.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For that, we had to innovate a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We included over 50 different features into the premium package.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then how do you make an app that is already more powerful than any other messaging app on the market?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
even more useful so that people would be ready to pay for this extra.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That wasn't easy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That took a lot of effort.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, so you keep improving the existing features and adding new ones.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And every time when you add a new feature, you don't want to clutter the app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So in a way, they're not in your way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're invisible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's not an easy thing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And most of the features maybe are not even known to the majority of our users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But when you need them, they're there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So premium is one source of our revenue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We also have ads, but they're context-based, not targeted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, we leave probably 80% of the value on
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
on the table because we are not ready to engage in all these practices, exporting personal data.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, because we would never use, for example, your personal messaging data or your context data or your metadata or your activity data to target ads.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's sad that it became synonymous with the internet industry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
this kind of exploitation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But we are happy with the fact that we managed to make Telegram profitable despite that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't think a phone is a necessary device.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're also experimenting a lot with blockchain-based technologies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're the first app to allow people to directly own their username and their digital identities using smart contracts and NFTs, removing Telegram from the picture.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So, for example, Telegram cannot confiscate your username from you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I remember growing up, I didn't have a mobile phone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We do a lot of things related to the ecosystem of Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have a thriving mini app platform, millions of mini app developers launching their own bots and applications.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We enable them to receive payments from the users through
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in-app purchase mechanism provided by Apple and Google, which I think was the first attempt of this kind to allow that both on iOS and Android and on a big platform so that third-party developers of mini apps, which are basically websites so deeply integrated into Telegram that you can't tell whether they're a standalone or they're a part of their overall experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I was a student at the university, I didn't have a mobile phone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And by providing this payment option, we're able to extract a commission from these transactions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it's a very low commission, presently it's 5%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we're not greedy here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We want people to succeed in building these tools for our users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We understand that many apps bring us users
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I finally got it to use a mobile phone, I never used phone calls.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The more users we have, the more successful and relevant Telegram becomes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We need third-party developers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think at this point, Telegram gives developers by far the most powerful tools to create.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
TON is a blockchain technology that we initially developed in 2018 and 2019.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And we started to develop it because we needed a blockchain platform to be integrated deeply into Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because we believe in blockchain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We think it's one of the technologies that enable freedom.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But at the time, if you look at Bitcoin, if you look at Ethereum, they were not scalable enough to cope with the load that our hundreds of millions of users would create.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was always in airplane mode or mute.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They would just become congested.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I asked my brother, can we create a blockchain platform that would be inherently scalable so that no matter how many users
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
or transactions there are, it would split into smaller pieces, which we call short chains, and would still process all transactions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he thought for a few days and said, yes, it's possible, but it's not easy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And we started building it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We ended up succeeding in developing that technology, but we couldn't release it because...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I hated the idea of being disturbed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The SEC, the Securities and Exchanges Commission in the United States, was unhappy with the way the fundraise for Don was conducted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we had to abandon the project and the open source community took over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Luckily, because we constantly conducted those contests for third party developers, there was a thriving community around TON, which now stood for The Open Network, as opposed to its prior name, Telegram Open Network.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And so this project
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
got eventually launched without our direct involvement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's thriving now because everything we do, like I said, this blockchain-based, tokenized, usernames, Telegram accounts are all based on TON and its smart contracts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's the only way for third-party developers and creators
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
to withdraw the funds that they earn through our revenue sharing programs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, with channel owners, we do a 50-50 split of ad revenues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's also the only way to transact on Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, if you want to buy ads on Telegram, you should use Tone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
All the new things we launch, for example, let's say,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I want to define what
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
gifts that we mentioned earlier which you can define as a reinvented socially relevant NFT integrated into a billion user ecosystem but at the same time available on chain transferable which you can own directly also based on TON incredibly fast growing space we only launched them half a year ago
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And now as a result of this Telegram Gifts, Talon has become, I think, the largest of the second largest blockchain in terms of daily NFT trading volumes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
is important in my life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't want other people or companies, all kinds of organizations telling me what is important today and what I should be thinking about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Snoop.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that's why when they reach out, suggest to do something together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So let's launch some Snoop related gifts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it was really fun.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We managed to sell 12 million worth of gifts within 30 minutes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
30 minutes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
After this, we have many requests from many really high-profile influencers that in a way are lining up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And each of these GIFs is scalable because it's vector-based.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It references certain points in Snoop's life
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
creative biography and each of them has countless different versions we had to create over 50 distinctive versions of each yeah and then each individual piece is unique because it also has unique background unique icon and the background and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's something that we reinvented because we didn't like the old school NFTs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
First of all, they were not relevant socially because, okay, you have an NFT.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Where do you demonstrate it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
A Telegram gift is there next to your name.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's part of your digital identity on Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you can create collections of gifts and show it off on your profile page.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But the other thing that we wanted to reinvent is the aesthetic part of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Most NFTs are just ugly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they're not based on any sophisticated technology.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So what we did with Snoop's Gifts, I think, represents an example of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Just set up your own agenda and the phone gets in your way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and at the same time, very accurate in terms of references to this specific artist's biography mixture between art and technology, which I think is quite rare.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm quite proud of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think it's a new trend, a new phenomenon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's only half a year old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So let's see where it goes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're going to select our next
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
influencer or artist to be part of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We didn't expect it, by the way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We just had a lot of fun launching these things and then we realized that one of the first collections we issued, we sold each piece at something like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
$5 and then the minimum price of any items in these collections currently is something like $10,000 and it keeps going up
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I was quite surprised with the reception.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I realized when you are trying to monetize social media platform in a way that is consistent with your values, you're forced to find ways that benefit
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
your users, not exploit them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People love these gifts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People love the fact that they can congratulate a person close to them with something valuable and at the same time something beautiful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Also, some people make a business out of it, which is funny.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They resell these gifts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We recently met a guy who earned several million dollars
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Just from buying and selling gifts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's a real market.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's a real market.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's just something that he did in a few months.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And last year, when we launched many new features for the mini apps on Telegram and the payment options for them and the other monetization options, the same guy earned $12 million worth
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
from many apps and I know several people just anecdotally I earned 10 million dollars I earned 3 million dollars just in a matter of months single-handedly sometimes they would have a team of 2-3 people so whenever I hear stories from people who
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
we're able to build businesses on top of Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This makes me incredibly proud.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, because this way I can contribute to the progress of society, or at least I like to think this way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was a big believer in Bitcoins since more or less the start of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I got to buy my first few thousand of Bitcoin in 2013.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I didn't care much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think I bought at the local maximum.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's something like $700 per Bitcoin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I just threw a couple of millions there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And a lot of people after Bitcoin later next year went down somewhere close to 300, 200, started to express their
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
sympathy to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They say, oh, you're a poor fellow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You made this horrible mistake investing in this new thing, but don't feel bad about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this makes me happier.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We still have some respect for you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And my response to them was, I don't care.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not going to sell it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I believe in this thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And again, I'm not talking about Bitcoin, but it relates to cryptocurrencies in general.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I have been able to fund my lifestyle, so to say, from my Bitcoin investment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Some people think if I'm able to rent nice locations or
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
fly private is because I somehow extract money from Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Like I said, Telegram is a money losing operation for me personally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Bitcoin is something that allowed me to stay afloat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I believe it will come to a point when Bitcoin is worth $1 million.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Just look at the trends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The governments keep printing money like no tomorrow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Nobody's printing Bitcoin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There is a predictable inflation and then it stops at a certain point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Bitcoin is here to stay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
All the fiat currencies remains to be seen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Not this exact dilemma.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So the thing I'm trying to do, I try to allocate as much time as possible
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think this is a riddle that people have to face in Russian prisons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And metaphorically,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's describing all the situations where you presented a choice between two suboptimal options.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When you're running a big business or when you're running a large country, it is similar.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You sometimes face this dilemma.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What are you going to do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This very horrible thing or this also very horrible thing?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I think the right answer to this riddle is not to do any of these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
for sleep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Design a solution that turns a disadvantage into an advantage and then use it to cope with the other side of the problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So do you know the answer to that riddle?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Now, even if I allocate, say, 11 or 12 hours for sleep, I won't sleep for 11 or 12 hours.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is one of the ways to answer this question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you got to a tricky situation that probably earlier you made a certain mistake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It should have been avoided.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But the other quite creative answer to this question is that you take the sharp objects from one of the chairs or the spikes and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then they use them to cut off the objects from the other chair.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you know what objects I'm talking about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I believe this is the right answer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We are often being manipulated by politicians, by corporate leaders,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So what I end up doing is I end up lying in bed thinking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
to make a choice from two suboptimal options, and then when we are forced to make this choice and we make this choice, it's almost as if it's something that we have to assume responsibility for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't think we should be buying into that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And some people hate it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They say, you have to take a sleeping pill, but I never take pills.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's a very interesting subject.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The reason I have this is because a tribe that is almost extinct in Siberia and Mongolia called the Venki passed me this gift from them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I love these moments.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Normally, they would craft something like this only for their most respected leaders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It is supposed to be a token of their appreciation for bravery, courage, leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Ironically, it also translates...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I get so many brilliant ideas, or at least they seem brilliant to me at the moment, while
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in a very specific way into the Russian language.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In Russian, walrus's penis means something a bit funny, which is often used to describe nothing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So, for example, if you've been requested by, say, certain government or a certain business partner to provide something that you're not willing to provide,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can just politely have this penis bone in the background while you're doing the video call and hope that they would... Through osmosis, figure out the deep message.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm lying in bed either late in the evening or early in the morning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They asked a lot of questions about this walrus's penis bone in the airport.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Both here in the UAE and in France, they are always very interested in this thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The truthful answer to this question is I don't really know how many biological kids I have exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because at a certain point in my life, about 15 years ago, I decided that it was a good idea to be a sperm donor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's my favorite time of the day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Initially, a friend of mine asked me to help
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
because they were trying to have a baby with his wife and they experienced certain health issues that prevented them to do it the natural way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Sometimes I wake up, I go take a shower, still without the phone,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he told me, we don't want to just rely on some random anonymous genetic material.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We want somebody we know and respect to be the biological father of our kid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I said,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You gotta be kidding me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Sounds ridiculous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What have you been talking about?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then I realized it's actually a serious issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they were not the only couple struggling with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So eventually I got persuaded into doing more of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I can't say I'm incredibly proud of that, but I think it was the right thing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Particularly at the time when I thought, okay, I probably don't have much time on this planet left.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Things are getting trickier and trickier.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So if I can help some couples have babies, let's do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then more recently, when I was working on my will, I realized that I shouldn't make a distinction between the kids conceived naturally
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Beautiful ideas can come to you while you're doing your morning exercise, your morning routine, without a phone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and the kids who are just my biological kids that I've never seen, as long as they can establish their shared DNA with me, someday, maybe in 30 years from now, they have to be
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
entitled for a share of my estate after I'm gone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that made a lot of noise in the news for some reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People get very excited by this kind of news.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I got a lot of messages from people claiming they're my kids.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I got a lot of requests from people asking me to adopt them
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The memes were priceless.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But understanding that, no, it's not a thing that most people do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't see anything wrong with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If anything, I think more people should be donating sperm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you open your phone first thing in the morning, what you end up being is a creature that is told what to think about for the rest of the day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, I think overabundance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
paralyzes motivation and willpower.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's extremely harmful, particularly for young boys, to grow up in an environment where they can be proud not of their own achievements, but of their father's achievements, of their father's wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's still risky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But one of the reasons I decided it makes more sense to divide this huge wealth that I'm likely to leave behind among a hundred or more than a hundred people is that it won't be too much for every single descendant.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But at the same time, some people did the calculation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's still many, many millions of dollars for each child, so I'm not sure it helps too much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Same is true in a way if you've been consuming news from social media late at night.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then how do you define what is important and what you really want to become in life?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have evolved to overcome scarcity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Almost by definition there has never been such thing as infinite amount of food or entertainment in our lives before now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We seem as a species to lose our ability to identify purpose in a world where you have everything and everything loses its meaning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Now, I'm not saying you have to completely stay away from all sources of information, but take some time to think about what's really important for you and what you want to change in this world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Restrictions are important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think, though, that they should be coming from within.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It should be self-restriction rather than a restriction in order to create purpose and meaning in life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In a way, I was lucky in a very counterintuitive way because I grew up poor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't have money when I was a teenager.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I had the same jacket for years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which was bought on a second-hand marketplace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
My father wouldn't receive his salary as a university professor for months because the Russian state was almost bankrupt back then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
My mom had to juggle two jobs to take care of us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was not easy, but it also created purpose.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It created meaning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It created priorities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It allowed us to focus on things that mattered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It allowed us to develop our character and intellectual abilities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Now, if we had everything, why do anything?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is not an accident.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This kind of experiment has been repeated countless times.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At a certain point, social dysfunction and the erosion of social roles becomes contagious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the society gradually degrades into a chaotic collection of individuals unable to take care of the next generation or even to produce the next generation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it goes extinct.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We should find the right balance between chaos and order, between self-restriction and freedom for creativity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I know it's kind of counterintuitive because I founded one of the largest social networks in the world, after which I founded the second largest messaging app in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's a person who wrote countless books on ancient Rome and ancient Roman literature.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
dozens of scientific papers, and I always remember him working.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He would be busy typing his books and articles in an old-school typewriter back in the late 80s, early 90s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
he was relentless the example he said to myself and my brother was priceless some people make this mistake of thinking that you can instill the right principles in the future generation or into your kids by saying things to them but kids are smart they discount words they look at the actions
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So observing our father was a big lesson by itself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It wasn't necessary for him to say anything to us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then at the same time, he was incredibly patient, emotionally resilient.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
My mom, a great woman, incredibly smart, highly educated, but she would sometimes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
tried to test the patience of my father.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's a trait rooted in our biology.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's an evolutionary explanation for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you're supposed to be really connected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Women sometimes tend to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he demonstrated incredible patience all the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He told me recently, you shouldn't give the wrong example to the people around you, and in particular to your kids, because you can do the right thing nine times out of ten, but you make a mistake once, and they will instantly copy it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you're telling your kids not to use a smartphone, but you're using a smartphone all the time yourself,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and coming up with all kinds of sophisticated, brilliant explanations why they shouldn't be using a smartphone, it won't land.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's bound to fail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you lead by example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But the conclusion you reach very early is that the more connected and accessible you are, the less productive you are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And there are other numerous lessons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Staying positive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Looking at the bright side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Never despair.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Be honest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you know, he told me, last time I spoke to him, that AI can have consciousness, can be creative, but it cannot have conscience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In a way, it cannot be moral.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It cannot have deeply rooted principles.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It cannot have integrity in the meaning that we understand it as human beings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are many explanations why it works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then how can you run this thing if you're constantly bombarded by all kinds of information, most of which is irrelevant to the success of what you're trying to build?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
One thing most people agree on is that setting goals and staying positive and confident does allow you to achieve the things you want to achieve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's very hard to believe, though, that you can just manifest things into being without applying effort in the direction that seems to be logical.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe some people exist that can just sit on the bank of a river and materialize things by the power of their thought, but
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not sure I'm one of these people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I always found it more easy to believe that if you couple this optimism and faith with logical action, then it is bound to be successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh, yes, over many, many, many days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It is possible to imagine our world as a high-dimensional universe where humans have the ability to navigate through it with the power of belief, which is coupled with positive emotion,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and logical thinking, but we are getting into an esoteric realm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We don't have any proof of that, but we also know that we probably at this point haven't discovered even 1% about this universe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You know, the entire world can be fascinated by a fight, a quarrel between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I admire your belief in the fact that we get to experience
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
this together, because it's not obvious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe each of us experiences his own or her own universe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And maybe every second the universe splits into a billion of different universes, and everything that can happen happens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And there is a universe where, say, I died in 2013.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe every time I die, I actually get to shift to a parallel universe when I don't die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then it keeps going.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at certain points, we achieve this quantum immortality when we're 1,000 years old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But a lot of people from other versions of reality think we are long gone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But for the vast majority of these people following this saga, it's irrelevant.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It won't change their lives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Thank you for saying that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm also incredibly grateful to you and to the fact that I happen to be in this version of reality when I haven't died, at least yet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And hopefully we'll get to spend more fun moments in the years to come together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in any case, they can't affect it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it's a bit pointless.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, there are people who are engaging in activities that require them to be up to date of everything that's going on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But 99% of people aren't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they're trying to influence your emotions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that's how you get into trouble, because you can be forced to make conclusions
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
that are not in your best interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm a human being like everybody else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I do get to experience emotions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Some of them are not very pleasant.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I believe that it's the responsibility of every one of us
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
to cope with these emotions and to learn to work through them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Self-discipline is particularly important because without it, how can you overcome this seemingly endless loop of negativity or despair?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
that ultimately leads to depression for some people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I normally never have depression.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't remember having depression in the last 20 years, at least.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe when I was a teenager.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you are stuck in this loop of being worried about something, nothing's ever going to change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And people often make this mistake thinking, oh, I should just have some rest and then regain energy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is not how it works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You gain energy by doing something.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you start doing something, then it happens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You feel motivated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You feel inspired.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then ultimately you do something else, a little bit more, a little bit more.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in a few years, who knows, you may end up achieving great things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And going to the gym is a good example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are many days when you don't want to start working out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But you have to overcome this initial reluctance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you get to a point that you enjoy it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you think, oh my God, it was such a good idea to come to the gym today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it's similar to pretty much every activity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You get to write some code.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Write a small piece of code first.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you get inspired.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then you'll come up with more ideas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You need to write a novel or just write a paragraph.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is pretty obvious and it's not a secret.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But because we are bombarded with all kinds of information that is not really important for us in terms of becoming successful, we often forget the important things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is one of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Let's say on a daily, on a weekly basis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I do 300 push-ups and 300 squats every morning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in addition to that, I go to the gym normally five, six times a week, spending between one and two hours every day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So push-ups and squats are still a big part of your routine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, this is how I start my day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not sure they do a lot in terms of changing your body, but they're definitely a good way to practice self-discipline.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because you don't want to do these push-ups in the morning most of the days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Squats are particularly boring.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're not that hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're just boring.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But you overcome it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then it's much easier to start doing other things
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
related to your work, for example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I can, I also take a nice bath, because it's another exercise of self-discipline.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think the main muscle you can exercise is this muscle, the muscle of self-discipline.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Not your biceps or your pecs or anything else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if you get to train that one, everything else...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It just comes by itself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't know if it's crazy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think it's quite natural and normal by this time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But maybe I could just get used to it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So banya is this extreme kind of sauna practiced by Eastern Europeans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it is done...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in a way that maximizes heat, and they also use all kinds of herbs and branches, and it's a much more holistic and natural experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then a necessary part of it is you get to a cold plunge, and then you go back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And again, this is one of those things that maybe in the moment is not always that pleasant, particularly if you go to extreme temperatures.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You don't feel great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't always feel great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But this feeling is passing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's only a few minutes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Same with the ice bath.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to suffer a bit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you get to feel great for hours and days after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What's more, it gives you this long-term health benefits.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In a way, you can look at it as alcohol in reverse.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Alcohol will give you this short fleeting pleasure for an hour, for a couple of hours, but then you will be paying for it with long-term negative consequences.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'd rather do banya in Ice Bath.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I left swimming for hours.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The longest I swam was five and a half hours in Finland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was quite cold.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I got lost in the process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Barely could find my way back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The reason I do it, yes, you feel great after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You're shaking a little bit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You feel great after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You cross a huge lake, and I crossed many lakes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Geneva Lake, Zurich Lake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And every time you feel this achievement, which makes you happy, makes you feel strong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you're more ready to other challenges.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And of course, when you know you're going to start a journey that will last a few hours, you're reluctant to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But you swim for 10 minutes and then for 20 minutes and then for 30 minutes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it teaches you this incredible patience that I think is necessary if you want to achieve anything in life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's pretty meditative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Lake versus ocean.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you don't have to go too fast.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
reasonably stress-resilient person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't panic at that moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And there were worse swims I had that were shorter but involved accidents and, you know, about some of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So that wasn't the worst by far.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But an important thing about swimming and physical activity in general is that it makes your mind clear and your thinking process is becoming more efficient.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because at the end of the day, the efficiency of our brain is limited by how much sugar and oxygen our heart can push through blood to our brain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
How can you make this go faster?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or how do you make your lungs more efficient?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
How do you make your heart more efficient in doing that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Physical activity is the only way I know of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's also being stress resilient.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
All of these qualities are necessary if you want to run a large company, if you want to start a company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm surprised when I started doing this more than 10 years ago that more CEOs didn't engage in sports.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The situation changed in the last several years, which is great because back in the day, if you take 20 years ago, there was this stereotype that if you're strong, you must be not very smart and vice versa, which is a complete lunacy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Very often, these two things go together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh, yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I can't train, I can instantly feel that stress is creeping on me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So even in situations when I'm constrained, I can't go to gym.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would just keep doing push-ups.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Don't you feel weird when you have a day without physical activity?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if you can do pull-ups, it's even better.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, sugar is pretty easy because it's addictive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The more you consume sugar, the more you want it, the hungrier you get.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So if you want to stay efficient and healthy, why consume processed sugar?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You'll just end up snacking all the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Intermittent fasting, so eating only within 6 hours and not eating for 18 hours every day, also...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
brings structure into your day and into your eating habits.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you don't crave sugar anymore because you know if you eat sugar and then you're unable to snack, you're just punishing yourself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I read a few books on longevity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think something everybody agrees on is that sugar is harmful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
No, I'm not militant about sugar.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can eat berries, fruit, if you feel your body needs it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it's not true to think
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's necessary to consume sweet things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Not for children, not for adults.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Red meat, I stopped eating it about 20 years ago because I just felt heavy every time I had it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I guess it's individual.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's my metabolism, my digestive system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
isn't agreeing with this kind of food.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I normally eat seafood of all kinds and vegetables.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is the basic source of calories for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, and trying to identify the real cause of an issue you're experiencing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you're experiencing a headache, one solution would be to take a pill, and then the headache disappears.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What this pill would actually do in most cases, it would mute the consequence, your feeling of pain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's a painkiller.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It will not eliminate the root cause.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you have to ask yourself, what is it that is causing this headache?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Do I need to drink some water?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is the air quality here bad?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Do I need to start getting more sleep?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is there something wrong with people around me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're stressing me out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There must be some reason why you're experiencing a headache.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But if you take a pill, you're not removing this reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You're actually making it worse.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because this harmful factor is still there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's like you're piloting a helicopter and there's some red signal, some red lamp starts to blink and it starts producing bad, unpleasant noise.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What would you do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You would try to figure out the cause and eliminate it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe there is some bounty next to you and you have to avoid it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or you take a hammer and smash the signal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think the answer is quite obvious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So why are we constantly doing this regardless?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh, because everybody else is doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because there's a whole industry trying to persuade you that this is the right thing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it's incredibly important to analyze yourself and try to get to the bottom of things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, I've been staying away from all of that since I became an adult.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When you're a teenager, your mom would typically say, we need to take this pill, otherwise the world collapses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Once I became a grown-up, I said, no, I don't think that the producers of pill are...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
incentivized in the right way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're not really interested in eliminating the root of the problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They would rather have me dependent on the pills they're producing so that I could buy them forever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then I also realized, no, I'm not saying that you should never take pills.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are obviously some diseases that you can only fight with antibiotics, for example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I'm not suggesting we go back to the Middle Ages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But what I'm saying is we overuse pills.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is something I practice every day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I read some piece of news and I ask myself,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Who benefits from me reading this?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then you can end up coming to this conclusion that maybe 95% of things we read in the news have been written and published because somebody wanted you to...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
buy some product, support some political cause, fight some war, donate some money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Let's do something that would benefit other people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is not a problem to support causes that you truly believe in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
as long as it was your intentional choice and you're not being manipulated into fighting other people's wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And again, it ties back with...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
restrained from alcohol.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if your mind is clouded, how can you analyze yourself?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You will always be dependent on opinions of others.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You will always follow the mainstream.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then whatever the authorities or whoever in charge will tell you, you'll believe it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because you don't have a tool
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
of your own to rely on to come to your own conclusions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't watch porn because I just feel it's a surrogate, a substitute for a real thing that is not necessary in my life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If anything...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It just forces you to exchange some energy, some inspiration to a fleeting moment of pleasure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It doesn't make sense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in any case...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
As I said, it's not the real thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So as long as you can access the real thing, you don't need to watch porn.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then if you can't access the real thing, you shouldn't watch porn as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because it means there's some deficiency in your life, some problem that you have to overcome.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I try to act under assumption that I'm not going to die in one hour from now, and I'm going to stick around for a bit, despite the fact that we are all mortal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So why would I...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
exchange the mid and long term for the short term.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Doesn't make any sense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Quick pause, bathroom break.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, let's take a break.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The core engineering team is about 40 people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This includes backend, frontend, designers, system administrators.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, what we realized really early is that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
quantity of employees doesn't translate to quality of the product they produce, in many cases is the opposite.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you have too many people, they have to coordinate their efforts, constantly communicate, and 90% of their time will be spent on coordinating the small pieces of work they're responsible for between each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The other problem with having too many employees is that some of them won't get enough work to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if they don't get enough work to do, they demotivate everybody else by their mere existence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're still there, they're still getting the salary, but they don't do anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if they don't do anything, more often than not, they will start trying to find their purpose elsewhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
maybe inside your team, but not by doing productive work, but by finding problems that don't exist within the team.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Also, when you intentionally don't allow some of your team members to hire more people to help them,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
they will be forced to automate things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In our case, we have tens of thousands of servers around the world, almost a hundred thousand, distributed across several continents and data centers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you try to manage this system
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
manually without automation, you will probably end up hiring thousands of people, tens of thousands of people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But if you rely on algorithms and the team is forced to put together algorithms
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in order to manage it, then it becomes much more scalable, much more efficient, and interestingly, much more reliable as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, humans are attack factors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if you have a distributed system that runs itself automatically, you have a chance at increasing the security of speed and speed of your service.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is what we did with Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
while also making it much more reliable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if some part of the network goes down, you can still switch to the other parts of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The way we designed Telegram is we never wanted to have any humans, any employees have any access to private messaging data.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's why since 2012, when we've been trying to come up with this design, we always invested a lot of effort into making sure that nobody can mess with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Like if you hire an employee or any of the existing employee, they can't break the system in the way that would allow them to access messages of users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then, of course, we launched into an encrypted messaging that is even more protected, but it has certain limitations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you still have to rely on encrypted cloud.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So an interesting engineering challenge was how you make sure that no point of failure can be created within your team or outside.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
No, never.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, including governments and intelligence services.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you try to access any server in any of the data center locations, it's all encrypted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can extract all the hard drives and analyze it, but you won't get anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's all encrypted in the way that is undecipherable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was very important for us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's why we can say with confidence there hasn't been
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
ever a leakage of data, any leak of data from Telegram, not in terms of private messages, not in terms of, say, contact lists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
No.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We design a system in a way that's impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It will require us to change the system, and we won't do that because we made a promise to our users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We would rather shut Telegram down in a certain country than do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think it's fundamental.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Without the right to privacy, people can't feel fully free and protected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I guess part of it is just me being me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I stood up for myself and for my values since I was a little kid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I always had issues with my teachers because I would point out their mistakes during classes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at the end of the day, what's important is to remind yourself that you have nothing to lose.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They can think they blackmail you with something, they can threaten you with something, but what is it they can really do to you?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Worst case, they can kill you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But that brings us back to the first part of our discussion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's no point living your life in fear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
As for Telegram, it's incredibly successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But if we lose one market or two markets or pretty much all of the markets, I don't care that much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It won't affect me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It won't affect my lifestyle in any way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I will still be doing my push-ups, you know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you don't like encryption.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You don't like privacy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You think you should ban encryption in your country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
like the European Union is trying to do now for all the member states, well, go ahead and do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We'll just quit this market.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We won't operate there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's not that important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They all think that somehow we profit from their citizens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the only goal tech companies have is extracting revenues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Most tech companies are like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But there are projects like Telegram, which are a bit different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I'm not sure they realize that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are no shareholders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Which is quite unique.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this allows us to operate the way we operate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
To build this project and maintain it based on certain fundamental principles.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Which, by the way, I think everybody believes in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think the right to privacy...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
is included in the constitution of most countries, at least most Western countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it's still under attack almost every week.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it often starts with well-meaning proposals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh, we have to fight crime.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have to protect the children.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But at the end of the day, the result is the same.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People lose their right to such fundamental thing as privacy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They sometimes lose their right to express themselves, to assemble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is a slippery slope that we witnessed in pretty much every autocratic country or country that used to be free and then became autocratic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
No dictator in the world ever said, let's just strip you away from your rights because I want more power to myself and I want you to be miserable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They all justified it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
with very reasonable-sounding justifications.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then it came in stages, gradually.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And after a few years, people would find themselves in a position when they're helpless.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They can't protest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Every message they send is monitored.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Perhaps some of them assume they're doing good, but interestingly,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
it always results in the state accumulating more power at the expense of the individual.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then where does it stop?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You know, we humans are not very good at finding the right balance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in this case, the right balance between chaos and order, between freedom and structure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the government is not some abstract notion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The government consists of people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And these people have goals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They would naturally be inclined to increase their level of influence, to have more subordinates, to have more resources.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that's how you end up in an endless loop of ever-increasing taxes, ever-increasing regulations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which ultimately suffocates free market, free enterprise, and free speech.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you do want to have very, very strict limitations on the extent the government can increase its powers at the expense of citizens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Ironically, you don't have those limitations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You're supposed, in all countries, which are considered to be free,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's supposed to be the constitution that protects everybody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But interestingly, it doesn't work always this way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They are able to find very tricky phrasings in order to cover out exceptions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then the exception becomes the rule.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I arrived in France last year in August, just for a short two-day trip.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then I see a dozen of armed policemen greeting me and asking me to follow them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then I realized they're being serious and they're accusing me of all possible crimes that the users of Telegram have allegedly committed with some users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they think I should be responsible for this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Which again, like you said, is something that never happened in the history of this planet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are good reasons for that because you're sacrificing a big part of your economic growth by sending these kind of messages to the business and tech community.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So they put me in a police car and I found myself in police custody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I spent almost four days there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In the process, I had to answer some questions of the policemen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They were interested in how Telegram operates.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
very limited understanding, or should I say even lack of understanding, on behalf of the people who initiated this investigation against me about how technology works, how encryption works, how social media work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I agree with you on the absurdity of this thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if this was a good faith attempt to fix an issue,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There were so many ways to reach out to Telegram, to reach out to me personally, voice their concerns, and solve any alleged problem in a way that is conventional and diplomatic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The way every other country on this planet solves these problems, including with Telegram, and we did it dozens of times.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's a concept that is challenging to explain to them, but I think they will learn much more about it by the end of this investigation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's my hope.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In any case, you're right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I mean, if you look at Telegram, we've been fighting harmful content that is publicly distributed on our platform since 10 years ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Actually, since the time we launched public channels on Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And since something like eight years ago, we had daily transparency reports on how many channels related to child abuse or terrorist propaganda we're taking down daily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Every day we've taken maybe...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
would take down hundreds of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if you include all kinds of content that we remove, all the accounts, groups, channels, posts, that would amount to millions of pieces of content every week, hundreds of thousands every day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then somebody would read the newspaper, get enraged because they would read something about child porn, and this is a subject that is very emotionally charged, and start doing something not based on data and logical thinking and laws, but based on emotions driven from inaccurate input.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And what is that experience like?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In France, they have this role of investigative judge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't think you have it in many other places in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It means I'm not on trial.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm being investigated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in France, it's not just the police or prosecutor asking me questions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's the judge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which in my experience is more like still a prosecutor, but it's called a judge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that makes it harder to appeal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So if you're limited in, say, countries where you can travel, then to appeal that restriction will take you a lot of time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The investigation itself should have never been started.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's an absurd and harmful...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
way of solving an issue as complicated as regulating social media.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We did last year, I believe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We are still not even given a hearing date for the appeal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
because the process is painfully slow, not just for me, but for everybody, which made me realize the system may be broken in many levels.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
by very unnecessary actions of investigative judges that ended up being unjustified and biased.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in the end, you can perhaps solve it when you reach a higher court and you'll get justice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
but you lose a lot of time and energy in the process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So this is the only thing that is, I hope, different and will be different in this case compared to the story you told from Kafka.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's a hard question to answer because it doesn't depend on just my actions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I will, if anything, double down on defending freedoms because I experienced firsthand what the absence of freedom feels like, at least during these four days in police custody, when you're just stuck, unable to communicate with people that are important to you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I have no crystal ball that would tell me the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I can't say that I am pessimistic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think we've been able to gradually remove most of the restrictions initially imposed on my freedom last August.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it won't be very polite, so I'm not sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's good to say because you're wearing a tie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think the French government is losing this battle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This battle is wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
resilient and defiant i become yeah and i think i have proven that in the last several months when there were attempts to use my situation being stuck here in france by approaching me and asking me to do things in other countries blocking certain channels
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
changing the way Telegram works and not only I refused I told the world about it and I'm going to keep telling the world about every instance any government in this case in particular the French government tries to force me do anything
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I would rather lose everything I have than yield to this pressure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if you submit to this pressure and agree with something that is fundamentally wrong and violates the rights of other people as well, you become broken inside.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You become a shell of your former self on a deep biological and spiritual level.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I wouldn't do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There are probably other people in the world that would consider that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I don't care.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Telegram disappears to something people don't understand, including in these intelligence services or governments.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'll be fine if they put me into prison for 20 years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Which, let's be clear, it's not something that I think is realistic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But let's just think about it as a hypothetical situation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would rather starve myself to death and die there, reboot the whole game, than do something stupid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So when I got stuck in France, unable to leave the country for a few months,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was offered to meet the head of state foreign intelligence services through a person I know quite well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's actually a well-known tech entrepreneur in France, and he's well-connected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he said, this guy wants to meet you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I said, okay, fine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Let's do that, but I'm not promising anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I took the meeting, and in this meeting, I was asked...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't know if you followed the whole saga with the Romanian elections.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They had a presidential elections last year.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The results got canceled.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Now Romania at that point when I had this meeting was preparing for a new presidential elections.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The conservative candidate was not somebody who the French government was supportive of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So they asked me whether I would be shutting down, or ready to shut down, channels on Telegram that supported the conservative candidate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
or protest against the pro-European candidates, so they called the guy they liked.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I said, look, if there is no violation of the rules of Telegram, which are quite clear, you can't call to violence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But if it's a peaceful demonstration, if it's a peaceful debate, we can't do this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It would be political censorship.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We protected freedom of speech in many countries in the world, including in Asia, in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're not going to start engaging in censorship in Europe, no matter who is asking us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was very clear to the guy who was the head of French intelligence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I said, if you think that because I'm stuck here, you can tell me what to do, you're very wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would rather do the opposite every time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in a way, that's what I did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
had a small debate with him about the morality of this whole thing and then at a certain point just disclose the content of this entire conversation because I never signed an NDA I don't ever sign NDAs with any people like that I want to be able to tell the world what's going on and that's quite shocking to me that you would have people in the French government
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
trying to get advantage of this situation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, if they had nothing to do with the start of this investigation itself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
millions of Telegram users collectively.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's quite strange that the same agency asked us to do certain things in Moldova as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So even before that, I think it was October last year or September, I was arrested in Paris in late August.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then again approached through an intermediary and asked, would you mind taking down some channels in Moldova because there is an election going on and we're afraid there's going to be some interference with these elections.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
could you please connect with the representatives of the government of Moldova and take care of it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We said, we're happy to take a look at it and see if there is content there that is in violation of our rules.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they sent us a list of channels and bots.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Some of them were, so it was a very short list, and some of these channels and bots were
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in violation indeed of our rules, and we took them down, only a few of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The rest were okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then they said, thank you, and sent us another list of dozens of channels, many, many channels.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We looked at these channels, we realized that there is no solid foundation to justify banning them, and we refused to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They talked to my judge, the investigative judge in this investigation that has been started against me, and told the judge good things about me, which I found very confusing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and in a way shocking, because these two matters have nothing in common.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Why would anyone talk to an investigative judge that is trying to find out whether Telegram did a good enough job in removing illegal content in France?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What does Moldova have to do with it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I got very suspicious at that moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Remember, it happened after we blocked a few channels that violated our rules, but before we refused to block a long list of other channels that were completely fine, which is people expressing political views, which I may not agree with, but it's their right to express them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Not extreme views, not views that call to violence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was extremely alarming.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was a moment when I told myself that there may be more going on here than I initially thought.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Initially I thought, yeah, some people are confused about how technology works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So by the time the head of intelligence services met me to ask about Romania, to help them silencing conservative voices in Romania, I was already wary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
of what can be going on next.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Ironically, we received a request from the French police to take down a channel of far-left protesters on Telegram in France.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We refuse to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We look to the channel, peaceful protesters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It doesn't matter for us whether we're defending the freedom of speech of people leaning right or leaning left.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the other side, the protesters against lockdowns, we protect everybody as long as they are not crossing the lines and not starting to call to violence or incite damage to public property.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People who haven't had this experience of living in countries that don't have freedoms don't always realize how dangerous it is to gradually compromise your values, your principles, your freedoms, your rights.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
public sector to stop increasing what they think should be the right size of government because today if you take France for example which is a beautiful country with a lot of talented people but public expenses are 58% of the country's GDP it's
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
maybe as much or more than in the later stage of the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you have this disbalance where you have many more people representing the state as opposed to people trying to bring the country's economy forward by creating great products and great companies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The startup field and my field, social media field, has been affected by it immensely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There was one great startup in this realm in France in the last 10 years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was a location-based social network.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was eventually sold to Snapchat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But before it was sold, the founder asked me whether he should sell.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I told him never sell.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you have a great thing going, you have lots of users, you have organic traction in many countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the first of this kind success story in France
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then he sold anyway in a couple of weeks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And later I met him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's trying to do a new thing now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I met him and I asked him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was trying to understand what went wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And one of the things he told me about is that while he was trying to run his company,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
competing with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, having all this pressure from investors, trying to hire the best people and persuade them to go to Paris.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he did a great job, by the way, but while he was trying to do that, he got also attacked by some silly investigation, again, involving the data protection issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which lasted forever and was gradually sucking blood of his team and his company, constant interrogations, disclosure requests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you know, this is a young company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It significantly increases the level of stress.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at some point, I think the pressure was too much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He decided to, I'm going to just sell it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Eventually, it turned out that there was no issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The investigation ended, as far as I understand, with no charges.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But such investigations, they have a price, they have a cost.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And unless the society realizes the cost of projects, of companies, of startups that are never created or are sold to the United States at the very early stage or other countries,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
resulting in decreased economic growth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think we just talked to a guy a few days ago who left France and started a business here in Dubai.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And one of the reasons he had to leave France is that the government started an investigation on his company and they frozen his bank accounts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this investigation
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
that involved taxes lasted for many, many years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I believe he said eight years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at the end of these eight years, the government reached to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In the meantime, his corporate bank accounts were frozen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The only reason why he was able
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
to retain sanity is because he moved to Dubai and started a new company, which is incredibly successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And now he's enriching this city, which we're in right now, with his great ideas and creativity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to cherish these people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I guess the French public or some part of the French public was misled.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I don't know when, perhaps since the time of the French Revolution, to believe that entrepreneurs are somehow their enemies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're the evil rich people that are the cause of all problems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If only you could make the rich share their ill-gotten wealth with the rest of the population, then every problem will be magically solved.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In reality, though, a lot of these people that are starting such companies with fire in their eyes are sacrificing their lives, their livelihood, their working 20 hours a day, their experiencing immense stress.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in order to fulfill their vision and bring value and good to the society around them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They create jobs, they create great services, they create great goods, they make your country grow, they make your people proud.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to cherish them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But what does the system do to them?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because perhaps there was somebody in the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
tax authority that decided to advance their career and perhaps you know was too ambitious and not too smart so as a result the company was destroyed
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And now the same entrepreneur, by the way, who we talked to, is invited to come back to France.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's being offered really good terms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He said, you're going to open this new venue on Champs-Élysées.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're going to give you the best location.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We're going to fund part of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Tax breaks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he said, never, just forget about this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not coming back to France.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's traumatized by the experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he's French.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He was born there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He has a French passport.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So unless things like this change, France will, and the rest of Europe, will keep struggling with economic growth, with budget deficits.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
with unemployment, and all the other relevant social and economic metrics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At the age of 11, I got the opportunity to enter an experimental school in St.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Petersburg where I lived and you had to pass a rigorous test to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
get accepted the idea behind the school was that if you try to Squeeze as much information as possible into a brain of a teenager Making a focus on mass and foreign languages
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
then there will be some changes in the brain of the student that will allow the student to understand most other disciplines.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But we had a class, as a result, that didn't have any single focus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was very widespread across a lot of disciplines.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You would have four foreign languages at least, including Latin, English, French, German.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In addition, you can get ancient Greek.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You would have classes like biochemistry or psychoanalysis, evolutionally psychology.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The difference of this class as opposed to other classes in the same school, which was part of the St.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Petersburg State University and called Academic Gymnasium, was that unlike other classes which were specialized in some single subject like physics or math or history, this one tried to get the best from all of the specialized classes and bring it into one curriculum.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Since it was an experimental class, it wasn't possible to become a straight A student, to be excellent in all the subjects.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was considered crazy to even try.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was an experiment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it was in the middle of the 90s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Remember when Russia, particularly its educational system, wasn't regulated as much as it is today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was in the middle between the two stages of the Russian history, the Soviet history, and the modern Russian history of the 21st century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In any case...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I learned a lot from that experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
First of all, why I got into the school is because I kept being kicked out from other schools.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was good at all subjects, but not behavior.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We had this behavior grade in the Soviet Union in the early 90s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Perhaps they even have it today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was very bad at behavior, always challenging the teachers, always pointing out their mistakes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think I was very lucky to be able to do that and to be able to get away with it in the end.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because normally if you keep challenging authorities,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you just get kicked out of all schools, and then you end up nowhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I eventually got into a school where challenging teachers was not fully okay, but it was something that you could do, and then you would start a debate with the teacher, and normally they would allow you to express your point of view, and then some objective truth may come out of it as a result.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But at that point, I was pretty bored with my life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You know, every teenager gets to a point when they have this sort of existential crisis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What's the point of life?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What am I even doing here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At some point I decided, since I have to go to school anyway,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I might as well try to do something impossible and become the best students and get an A or what we called five in the Russian system on every single subject.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that kept me busy for a while.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
it was incredibly difficult because you didn't have enough time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Even if you just studied all the time,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
not doing anything else, you didn't have any time left to prepare all the homework tasks and get ready for the tests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I ended up using the breaks between classes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I got to the result I wanted to get to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I got the excellent mark in every subject.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that kept me happy for a while.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, I still think math is essential.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's something that shapes your brain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It teaches you to rely on your logical thinking to split big problems into smaller parts, put them in the right sequence, solve them patiently, try it again if it doesn't work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is exactly the same skill you need in programming,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
in project management, when you start your own company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's one of the few subjects at school which encourages you to develop your own thinking as opposed to rely on what other people have to say and just repeating their opinions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That is extremely valuable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And of course, once you're good at math,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can apply it in physics, in engineering, in coding.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's not surprising that most of the most successful tech founders and CEOs are very good at maths and coding because ultimately it's the same mental skill that you rely on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But back then in the school, I realized something else as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's that competition is really important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Competition is key.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is what motivates a lot of teenagers when they're at school.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And if you remove competition out of the education system, you end up
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
forcing kids to start competing elsewhere, for example, in video games.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's a trend you see now in many countries, including in the West, when well-meaning authorities or parents say, we don't want our kids to be too stressed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We don't want them to feel anxiety.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So let's just get rid of all the public grading system, all these rankings of who won, who lost.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We don't want any of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And part of it is justified, but as a result, some kids lose interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, you eliminate the losers, but you end up eliminating the winners as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then if you are overprotective of the kids in that age, they grow up, graduate schools or universities, and they are still not prepared for real life because real life is constant competition for jobs, for promotions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
for customers, and it's more brutal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What you have as a result is high suicide rates, high unemployment, all the things and negative trends you see now in many countries which thought eliminating competition from their education system was a good idea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They still persist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They still think competition is a bad thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They try to eliminate competition from their economy as well, to an extent, saying, we're going to make sure the losers don't lose and the winners don't get too much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But as a result, they make their entire systems less competitive, their entire economies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Some of them in Europe,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
are now struggling to keep up with China, with South Korea, with Singapore, with Japan and other places where the education system was based on ruthless competition.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So this is a hard choice any civilization has to make.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We support competition understanding that it eventually leads to progress in science and technology and abundance for the society at large.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or we remove competition thinking that somehow we can shield the future generations from the stress
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
that competition inevitably causes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
think there is a lot of evidence proving that we are biologically wired to compete and establish our understanding of what our qualities are and talents are in relation to other people around us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is one of the ways society self-regulates.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, first of all, I must say I learned pretty much everything from my brother.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Everything I know, because when we were used to be kids,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We slept in the same bedroom, like beds a few feet away from each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I kept bugging him with questions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'd ask him about dinosaurs and galaxies and black holes and Neanderthals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Everything I could think of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he was my Wikipedia back in the time when we didn't have internet access.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He's a unique prodigy kid, probably one of a billion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He started reading at the age of three, I think.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he pretty fast got so advanced in maths that by the age of six, he could already read really sophisticated books on astronomy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Sometimes when he did it in public places like buses or metro, my mom was criticized by people who were witnessing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They would tell her, why are you mocking your own kid with this serious book?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's obvious the kid can't understand everything there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's too complicated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Even we don't understand anything there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's some formulas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he was already...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
sucking in this knowledge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He just has this thirst for information.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So he was the source of all kind of great facts, useful things, inspiring things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He taught me pretty much everything I know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At the same time, he's incredibly modest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And kind.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is something I think a lot of people that think they're smart but not generally intelligent lack.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
More often than not, people who are truly intelligent, they're also kind and compassionate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Definitely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Part of it is his natural modesty.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I get to experience the difference between a society with freedom and a society without freedom pretty early in life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I tried to avoid it as well, but at a certain point I realized that me being too private, too secretive becomes a liability because it creates this void, this emptiness that people and organizations that don't like Telegram very much are willing to fill with inaccurate information and they're willing to spread the narratives about Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which can result in strange situations, some of which we discussed earlier.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, this French investigation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was four years old when my family moved from the Soviet Union to northern Italy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I wasn't interested in probably websites at first.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't even have access to the internet when I was 10 years old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But I liked video games.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't have enough of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the scarcity forced me to start building them, more computer games, just to play myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's actually an interesting thing that we sometimes don't realize it, but scarcity leads to creativity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And one of the reasons you have so many people who love to code coming from the Soviet Union or other places which didn't have much access to modern technology, and more importantly, modern entertainment, is that perhaps...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I could see that a society without freedom cannot enjoy the abundance of opinions, of ideas, of goods and services.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
we were not so much distracted by all this abundance of different entertainment options which is not to say it's bad to have those options it's just a fact that we sometimes don't appreciate so i started to build computer games my brother would sometimes guide me for example i would create a turn-based strategy
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, two-dimensional by client three-dimensional is too much for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it wasn't as slick in terms of the scrolling FPS, frames per second, parameter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I asked my brother how to optimize it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He would guide me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this kind of learning and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Training really shaped my coding skills when I was younger.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then I started to create video games for my classmates.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When we played, for example, tic-tac-toe on an infinite field in my class during the breaks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You know, not tic-tac-toe the three in a row.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is five in a row on an infinite field.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is a much more interesting game.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it gets quite complicated if you keep playing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
My classmates used to love it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And some of my classmates were really smart, you know, champions of math olympiads, sons and daughters of professors at the university.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I decided, no, I want to win every single time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't want to lose even a single time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So how do I win?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I need to practice more.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But how do I practice more?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I need an opponent stronger than myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Even for a four or five-year-old kid, it was obvious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I coded this game so that I would play against the computer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the computer would calculate, I think, four moves in advance to choose the optimal strategy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That wasn't enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Four more decisions in advance, I would still win over it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If I tried to calculate five or six, it was too slow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I asked my brother to help me out here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So he made this algorithm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Eventually, I trained myself to win every single time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can't experience all the toys, the ice cream of sorts, the cartoons in the Soviet Union that you can access in Italy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Even with the computer back then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We didn't have...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
modern CPUs, and I could still retain some self-confidence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would go back to school during breaks, play with my classmates, and soon people started to lose interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
None of my classmates wanted to play this game anymore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I killed the game.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So after that, when I got into the scene at Petersburg State University,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was quite boring just to study because it was too easy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I thought, what can I do there?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I created a website for the students of my faculty first.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I organized the creation of digital answers to all exams and digitalized version of all lectures, which was something very unique back then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Remember, it was 25 years ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would put together a website where I would publish all these materials and pretty soon it became super popular.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I opened a discussion forum there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In a few years I expanded to the university with all of its other departments and then to other universities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We ended up having
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
tens of thousands of users, just as a student's portal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We had all kinds of social features there, friends lists, photo albums, profiles, blogs, all of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then I got to realize something even more important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was quite successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And after I graduated the university,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
One of my ex-classmates from the school reached out to me after reading about my successes in a newspaper, the main business newspaper of St.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You don't get to contribute to this abundance without freedom.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Petersburg.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he asked me, are you trying to build a Russian Facebook?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I said, I'm not sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What's Facebook?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we met.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Since he graduated from American University two years before that, he showed me Facebook.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I thought, well, I can already have all of this technology, but it's valuable to know which elements I should get rid of in order to scale this thing and have millions of users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is also something people don't appreciate that sometimes in order to move forward and have more success, you have to get rid of things, including technology.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Getting rid of features is super important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Otherwise, it's just too complicated for the new user.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The existing users will be happy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They will be praising you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They will be asking you to add more stuff to make it even more complicated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at this point, it was pretty obvious to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
if you're only relying on the feedback of existing users.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So as a result, I started the website called VKontakte or VK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It means in touch in Russian.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Initially to solve my own personal problem, I graduated the university that same year and I wanted to be in touch, remain in touch with my ex-classmates from the university and the other fellow students.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And of course, as a 20-year-old, I wanted to meet other people, including good-looking girls.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So I started to build it from scratch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For that one, I thought, I'm not going to use any third-party libraries, modules, because I want to make it as efficient as possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was obsessing over every line of code.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then how do you start something that large?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I didn't have any prior experience of creating a project of that scale, which would involve everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Before, I would reuse some existing solutions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Here, I wanted to build from scratch, so I called my brother.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He was a postdoc student in
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
germany at that time in the max planck university and i asked him what should i start from and he told me just build a module to authorize users just don't not not just to log in you know yeah not even to sign up just to log in
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because you can pre-populate the database with credentials and emails and passwords.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It doesn't really matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But once you see that you can type in your password and email and you're in and it tells you hello using your name, then you will have a clear understanding where to go from there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
that's one of the best advice i've ever got in my life it's it worked perfectly by the way i started to build it and before i knew it i would have there on the website photo albums private messages this guest book we used to call the wall back on aka and i guess in the early days of facebook
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We'd end up building something even more sophisticated than Facebook at the time, with more features.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I had a girlfriend at the time, I asked her, we need to somehow come up with a database of all Russian schools and universities and departments and subdivisions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, the biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
She did a great job trying to source all this information online or sometimes writing emails to universities saying, which departments do you have exactly at this point?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We need to know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or reaching out to the Department of Education, both in Russia and then in Ukraine and then eventually in Belarus and in Kazakhstan and other countries where VK ended up to be the largest and most popular social network.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we did a few things that were quite unique at the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And for the first almost a year, I was the single employee of the company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was the back-end engineer, the front-end engineer, the designer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you make sure that they don't stand in your way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was the customer support officer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I was the marketing guy as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
coming up with all the warnings and the announcements, coming up with competitions to promote VK, which worked quite well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was an incredible experience that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
gave me knowledge of every aspect of a social networking platform.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's one of the reasons why I'd like to think I'm an efficient project manager and product manager inside Telegram because I will not...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you imagine the worst thing that can happen to you and then make yourself be comfortable with it, there's nothing more left to be afraid of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
take anything but ambitious deadlines from my team members.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If somebody gives me, oh, I need three weeks to do that, I always reply, well, I built the first version of VK in just two weeks, why would you need three weeks?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It seems like something you could
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
make real in these three days, three weeks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What are you going to do the rest of the three weeks apart from these three days?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you know, the team knows me and that's why we are able today at Telegram to move at a very good pace of innovation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Every month we're pushing several meaningful features.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think out-competing everybody else in this industry in terms of what you can do within a short time frame.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So yes, that experience was invaluable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
As for the stack, I started from PHP and MySQL, Debian and Linux, but very soon I realized
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I need to optimize this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I started using Memcached.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Apache servers were not enough anymore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We had to set up Nginx.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And my brother was still living in Germany, so he couldn't help me much for the first year of building BK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Sometimes I would manage to get through to him through a call.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would use an old school phone to call him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you stand your ground and you remember that it's worth living your life according to the principles that you believe in, even though this life can end up being shorter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
with the wires.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I said, what do I do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
How do I install this thing called Nginx?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'm not a Linux guy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If he felt particularly kind that day and not too busy, he would show me the way to do it or set it up himself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But for the most part, I had to rely on just myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Having him there, though, helped.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
when we started to grow fast and started to scale it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because at first you realize one server is not enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I need to buy another one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then another one and another one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The database should be in a different server.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then you have to split the database into tables.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then you have to come up with a way to chart the tables using some criteria that would make sense that wouldn't break your user experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When we got to over a million users and beyond a dozen of servers, surviving without the input from my brother in terms of taking care of the scaling aspect of it became impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I remember asking him to come back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He said, you need to help me with this thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's starting to be really big.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What was worse is that since we became popular, somebody started to do DDoS attacks on us, as it always happens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then we had people that wanted to buy a share of VK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And interestingly, every time we had a negotiation day, the DDoS attacks intensified.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So we had to come up with a way to fight it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I remember having many sleepless nights trying to figure it out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Unfortunately, if we didn't have bad actors and pressure, it would be the best job ever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
then a longer life, but lived in slavery.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You just get to create.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Do you contemplate your mortality?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yeah, so at that stage I could do the basic stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I could understand how I implement scalability into the code base, how I shorten my tables in the database, where I include memcached instead of direct memcached.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Anything about your death?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
requests to the database.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was quite easy because it was still PHP back in the day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When my brother got back from Germany, somewhere around 2008,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh, yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I asked him, can we make it even more efficient?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Can we make it super fast and at the same time so that we would require even fewer servers to maintain the load?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Are you afraid of it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And he said, yes, but PHP is not enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I'll have to rewrite a big part of your data engines in C and C++.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In a way, you have to go against your instinct of self-preservation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I said, okay, let's do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He invited...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
the friend of his, helped him, another absolute champion in world's programming contest twice in a row.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they put together the first customized data engine, which was far more efficient than just relying on MySQL and Memcached because it was, first of all, more specialized, more low-level.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
A large chunk of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Like, for example, the search, the ad engine, because VK had targeted ads, they built that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was very efficient what they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Eventually, the private messaging part, the public messages part.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's not easy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At some point, we realized there are very few websites online that load faster than VK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We are all biological beings hard-coded to be afraid of death.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Nice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I remember in 2009, I went to Silicon Valley and I met Mark Zuckerberg the first time and some of the other core team members of early Facebook.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Remember, Facebook was just four or five years old then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And everybody kept asking me, how come even here in Silicon Valley, BK loads faster than Facebook?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Everything seems to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
appear instantly on your website.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What's the secret sauce?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That was one of the things that made them very curious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
As one of the core technological ideas, we prioritize speed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Nobody wants to die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We think that people can notice the difference, even if it's just a 50-million-millisecond difference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The difference is subconscious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It also allows us not just to be faster and more responsive, but also more efficient when it comes to the infrastructure, the expenses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But when you approach it rationally,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because if your code executes faster, it means you need fewer computational resources to run it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So there is no way you can lose in making things faster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that's why we have always been very
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
careful when hiring people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I would only hire a person if I'm ultimately certain it's the best option.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You live and then you die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you hire somebody who is maybe a little bit distracted, unexperienced,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's no such thing as your death in your life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you may end up with inefficiencies in your code base that results in tens of millions of dollars of losses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And think about the responsibility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If we jump to today from the VK days, Telegram is used by over a billion people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They open it dozens of times every day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Imagine the app opens with a slight delay, say, half a second delay, multiplied by dozens of times by a billion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's centuries, millennia lost for humanity without any reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
other than just being sloppy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You stop experiencing life once you die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you have to ask yourself this question, is it worth living a life full of fear of death?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh yes, because when you...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
manage to discover a way to simplify things, make them more efficient, you feel incredibly happy and proud and accomplished.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And to your point, I can recall a few instances in my career where firing an engineer actually resulted to an increase in productivity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Say you have 200 engineers building their app and then
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
they just can't make it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They're not keeping up with the pace of the feature release schedule.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or it's much more enjoyable to forget about this and live your life in a way that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you think, I probably have to hire a third one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But then you notice that one of them is really weird, falling behind the schedule, complaining some of the time, doesn't assume responsibility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you ask, so what if I just fire this person?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you fire this person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And a few weeks you realize you actually don't need and you never needed the third engineer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The problem was this guy who created more issues and more problems than he solved.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That is so counterintuitive because in developing tech projects we tend to think that you just throw more people into something and then
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
things get solved miraculously by themselves, just because more people means more attention from them now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
makes you immune to this fear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Oh yes, because the other thing that people don't realize is how demotivating working with the B player is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
At the same time, remembering that death exists so that every day would count.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Everybody can tell if the other person, the other engineer they're working with is really competent.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it's very visible if the person is not competent, they're asking the wrong questions, they keep lagging behind.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you get this dissatisfaction, this feeling that you are not able to realize your full potential, accomplish what you're really meant to accomplish because of this person working next to you or pretending to work next to you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And by the way, in some cases, it's not because the person is lazy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In some cases, it's just their mental, their intellectual ability is not there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's not about experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Most often it's about natural ability and persistence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In 90% of cases it's just the inability to focus on one task for an extended period of time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Not everybody has this ability.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So for people who do have this ability, it's an insult to work alongside someone
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
who is distracted and cannot go deep in the projects that they're responsible for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Well, it's in line with my overall philosophy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think competition leads to progress.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you want to create an ideal process for selecting the most qualified people for certain specific tasks you have in mind, what can be better than a competition?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
A coding contest where everybody who wants to join your company as an engineer or just wants to get some prize money or validation
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's why I love reminding myself that I can die any day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
can demonstrate their skills and then we just select the best or if we are not certain
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
because there's not enough data to hire somebody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We just repeat the contest with another task, get more data, get more winners, then repeat it again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And at some point you realize, oh, actually, this guy has competed in 10 of our contests since he was 16 years old or 14 years old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Now he's 20 or 21.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He won in eight of these competitions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
He seems to be really good in JavaScript, on Android, Java, and also C++.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Why not hire this person?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
There's some consistency there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And a lot of these people, they have never worked in a big company before, which is priceless because in a big company,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
people tend to shift responsibility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They have this shared responsibility when nobody fully understands who can take credit for a project, who can take blame for a project.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Inside Telegram, it's pretty clear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And these competitions are the closest experience to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
what people will have when working at Telegram.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So for example, we want to implement certain very tricky animation and redesign to the profile page of the Telegram as Android version.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And the Android app
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's an open source app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Anybody can take its code and play with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So as a result, we would not just select the best person and hire this person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We would also select the best solution to the problem because we would not suggest the contestants to solve trivial problems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's something that's valuable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It saves a lot of time for us in terms of development.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And because I always had this large social media platforms which I could use to promote these competitions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Somehow both VK and Telegram were very popular among engineers and designers, other tech people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I had no issue to find, to promote this contest and find the right people ever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What can be better than for an employee of your company, of somebody who has been a user of it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If this person has no prior experience of using Telegram, their understanding would be very limited.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Why would I even try to hire somebody from LinkedIn who worked at Google and other companies, is used to receiving salary for nothing?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
is used to shift responsibility and being stuck in endless meetings and have very limited understanding of what Telegram stands for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's just crazy if you think about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We implemented it in 2013 in the secret chats.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The funny thing about it is then when other apps started to copy it, like WhatsApp seven years after, and then Signal and some other of these apps, they initially even copied the exact timestamps.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So, for example, if we had like one, three, and five seconds, they would also have one, three, and five seconds.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They tried not to change it because they were not sure what was the magic sauce behind it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And ironically, it happens with many of these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, when we designed how you reply to a message and you have a small snippet showing that you're replying to this message and now you're typing your response.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Then there is a small snippet in the message itself that, if you tap on it, highlights the original message you're replying to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Seems pretty obvious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But there are certain design decisions that we were implementing at the time, and we got this vertical line on the left, and all these other small things that are completely arbitrary, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can do it in a different way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But somehow the entire industry ended up copying exactly that solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So now whenever you go to WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, Facebook Messenger, Signal, it doesn't matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You would see exactly the same or pretty much similar experience because nobody really wants to take the risk and innovate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If something works, why not just copy it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's the hardest part.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
To make it look so that designers love it is one thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
The real challenge is make it look the way the designers love it and make it work on the weakest device as possible, the oldest, cheapest smartphones you can imagine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That one is quite easy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you take the moving gradient on the background of every Telegram chat,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is something most people don't notice, but they can feel it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When I was 11 years old, my biochemistry teacher, he gave me this book he wrote.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or efficient, but not too beautiful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because even doing something so trivial as a gradient can result in noticeable lines in the gradient that person can instantly say, oh no, it's not the right thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you can have to introduce certain randomness there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you have the gradient, but it's not enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was called The Illusion of Paradise.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's too plain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You want to have certain pattern as an overlay, but it should be simple enough not to...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
distract you from the content but it has to be entertaining enough to create a good feeling about the whole app and another question what kind of objects you want to include in this pattern and how this pattern would work will it be based on pixels or would it be vector-based and would it be vector-based so they will be infinitely scalable and high quality
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then I think for the default pattern and the default background, which is based on four colors, it's not a gradient based on two colors, it's four colors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And there he would describe the biological and chemical processes that happen in your body once you consume this or that substance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And they're constantly shifting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I probably look through several thousand variations of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because it is such an important decision to make.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's the default.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Of course, you can change it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Actually, you can set up your own four colors for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can change it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Really?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes, you can do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you want to rely on certain deeply hard-coded biological properties of the human mind, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So which color do you want to use?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is it going to be blue?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is it going to be yellow?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is it going to be green?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because each color has a different meaning in our brain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And what kind of objects we want to put there?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Something from our childhood, something from nature, or something that can create a different kind of mood.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this is just one detail of the app.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So there are many details.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
When you send a message, you are done typing a message, and you then tap send, and then the message gradually appears in the chat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
How does it happen?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you want the input field to slowly morph into the actual message.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
To the message, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And you want this to be done regardless of the contents of the message.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because sometimes the width would be different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Sometimes it would be containing media or link preview or other stuff that will change the message bubble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you go through countless different scenarios and make sure every one of them works great, even if this message contains 4,000 characters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you look at all the platforms, iOS, Android, and all the old devices, all kinds of outdated operating systems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and the hardware and you cross the tool because you can have this really bad old phone but using the newest operating system version so what do you do what kind of bugs you get there and then of course since Telegram works on
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It was mainly related to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Tablets as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And our iOS version works on an iPad, which I love a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to understand that everything can be really big, so it can consume a lot of space on your screen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
illegal drugs, but alcohol was one of these addictive substances that he covered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then it will trigger using more computational resources to render it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So there are a lot of nuances to it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But as long as you're obsessed over every small detail, at least every detail that really counts,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You can get to a user experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you're really used to Telegram, if you've been a regular user for at least a few weeks, going back to any other messaging app feels like a serious downgrade.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
experience oh yeah and boy was it hard to make particularly on android this is this thanos snap effect right so the message is broken to tens of thousands particles which go away like dust in the wind it looks great but it was so hard to make probably one of my one of my favorite
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So it turns out that when you drink alcohol, the thing that happens is that your brain cells become paralyzed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
their communication with all this additional animation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So you want them to be invisible in a way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And in order to do that, it...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
you have to overcome even more challenges.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
For example, you mentioned this deletion effect, message evaporates.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If you do the animation, if you show the animation first, and then the message that is preceding the deleted message that is going after the just deleted message move closer to each other, then it doesn't feel right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It feels too long, too imposing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So what you want to do is you want the message disappear while the messages around it go closer to each other to fill the resulting gap.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then you imagine what it involves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Redrawing the entire screen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
They become literally zombies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So on top of this very complicated animation,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to think about things like which kind of messages were there before, after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That just adds to complexity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then next day, sometime after the party is over, some of your brain cells die and never get to normal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But you know, once you accomplish it, it gives you this immense sense of pride.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because nobody is doing this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Nobody really cares.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
In a way, maybe they're right not to care.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Maybe nobody notices this, but there is something about it that feels wrong when such things are neglected, because I understand that every day tens of millions of people around the world are deleting messages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What kind of experience do they get?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Is this an experience that maybe even subconsciously inspires them and makes their heart sing even a little bit?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
fills them with joy, lightens up their mood even a little bit by 0.001%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Or is it something that is just basic?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And I think if we can...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
bring some value in people's lives, even through these subtle details.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We have to definitely invest our time in it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
So think about this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
If your brain is this most valuable tool you have in your journey to success and happiness, why would you destroy this tool for short-term pleasure?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
People like when other people care.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
That's, again, an intersection of art and technology.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Because you look at the stickers which Telegram launched way before most of these other apps.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Ahead of WhatsApp, yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But the stickers that WhatsApp ended up launching three years and eight months after, the first version was not really good because they just did regular GIFs or WebM videos
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
which were not based on vector graphics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
What we did is vector animations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Each of these stickers is only several kilobytes, sometimes maybe maximum 20-30 kilobytes in size, but it says 180 frames.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
We were able to run them at 60 frames per second on all devices.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
and it's also very challenging was a challenging thing to do we had so much headache trying to make it work nobody even tried to do anything like this before us because it's crazily difficult but as a result you have this fluid animations you have this really nice user experience somebody sends you a sticker you don't have to wait for it to load because it's so lightweight
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And it starts moving instantly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then, of course, it's not just engineering.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
You have to find designers that are able to create these stickers using vector graphics, which means they're based on curves described by formulas, not just created as photographs with pixels.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This sounds ridiculous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Where do you find these people?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Again, we need competitions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
But it was not easy to assemble a team of artists slash artists, artists slash engineers, I would say, that are able to do something like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
This is a unique form of art.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And this allowed us to do a revolution in stickers, then another revolution in animated emoji that you can add into messages, custom animated emoji.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I don't think anybody did that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
I think Telegram is still the only one allowing users to do that because you can include a hundred of animated emoji in a message and they will be animated and they will be moving and your device won't crash.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
It's probably unnecessary and crazy, but we think somewhere in this intersection of art and engineering, true quality is created.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And then, of course, more recently, we expanded into what we call Telegram Gifts, which are essentially blockchain-based collectibles that you can demonstrate on your Telegram profile so that they get social relevance, but you can also use them to congratulate your friends and close the one with their birthdays and other holidays.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
And that was received extremely well.