Pavel Durov

go in line with the mainstream narrative.

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.

You limit the freedom of people, you inevitably decelerate economic growth, level of happiness, the way people can

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.

They are among the first to start utilizing some of these recent innovations that Telegram implements.

They are the early adopters.

I say them and also the Americans, perhaps other people from Eastern Europe like Ukrainians and Southeast Asians.

They are among the first people to start using any new edition that we launch.

They're incredibly hungry for innovation.

We're protecting freedom of speech.

it's not a way to make a lot of friends.

Yeah.

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.

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

actually are agents of some foreign rival, a geopolitical force that wants to destroy our country.

This is something that every authoritarian regime in history used.

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

These people who are masquerading as opposition are actually the agents of this other country that wants to take over.

That's why, dear citizens, forget about your freedoms.

And now increasingly you see similar attempts in free countries.