Founder reveals who puts most pressure on Telegram — RT World News
Pavel Durov said that both major political parties in the United States tried to influence the developers of the messaging app
Telegram received warnings from both the Democratic and Republican parties after the January 2021 riots at the US Capitol, Pavel Durov, co-founder of the popular messaging app, said in an interview with Tucker Carlson. However, most of the pressure, according to Durov, comes from tech giants Apple and Google.
The rare discussion took place at the Russian-born IT businessman's office in Dubai and was released on Wednesday. Carlson asked Durov to give an example of a request to create backdoors in Telegram that had passed censorship and could be considered espionage or an invasion of people's privacy. The messaging app claims to have over 900 million active users.
“There was a funny story about your home country.” The tech entrepreneur replied. “After the events of January 6, we received a letter, I believe, from a member of Congress on the Democratic side, and they asked us to share all the data that we had regarding what they called 'that insurrection.'
On January 6, 2021, a mob loyal to then-US President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol and forced lawmakers into hiding in an attempt to prevent Congress from formalizing Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election.
Durov said his team examined and examined the letter “He looked very serious” Basically saying: “If you fail to comply with this request, you will violate the United States Constitution.”
“Two weeks after that letter, we received another letter, a new letter, from the Republican side of Congress, and there we read that, if we provide any data [to the Democrats]That would be a violation of the US Constitution.
So we received two letters saying: Whatever we do, we are violating the Constitution of the United States.
Durov went on to say that in general, American tech giants are putting the most pressure on Telegram. “I would say the biggest pressure isn't coming from governments. It's coming from Apple and Google. When it comes to freedom of expression, these two platforms can, basically, censor everything you can read and access on your smartphone. He said. “They make it very clear that if we fail to adhere to their guidelines, as they call them, Telegram may be removed from [app] Shops.”
Durov rejected any suggestion of links between Telegram and the Russian government, suggesting that competitors might raise such rumors to discredit the company.
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