Kind: captions
Language: en
The following is a conversation with
Pavo Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram,
a messaging platform actively used by
over 1 billion people. Pavo has spent
his life fighting for freedom of speech,
building tools that protect human
communication from surveillance and
censorship. For this, he has faced
pressure from some of the most powerful
governments and organizations on Earth.
In the face of this immense pressure, he
has always held his ground, continuously
fighting to protect us of privacy and
the freedom of all of us humans to
communicate with each other. I got the
chance to spend a few weeks with him and
can definitively say that he is one of
the most principled and fearless humans
I've ever met.
Plus, when I posted that I'm hanging out
with Pavle, a lot of people, fans of
his, wrote to me asking if he does, in
fact, privately live the disciplined,
aesthetic life he's known for. No
alcohol, stoic mindset, strict diet and
exercise, including a crazy amount of
daily pull-ups and push-ups, no phone
except to occasionally test Telegram
features, and so on. Yes, he is 100%
that guy, which made the experience of
hanging out with him really inspiring to
me. I'm grateful for it and I'm grateful
to now be able to call him a friend.
This podcast conversation is in parts
philosophical about freedom, life, human
nature, and the nature of government
bureaucracies.
And it is also in parts super technical
because to me it is fascinating that
Telegram has a relatively small
engineering team and yet is able to
basically out innovate all of its
competitors with an insane rate of
introducing new unique features. Just
like the meme of the Simpsons did it
first when you consider all the features
we know and love in our communication
apps. In almost every case did it first.
So, we discuss it all from the
Kuffka-esque situation he's in the midst
of in France to the roller coaster of
his life and career to his philosophy on
technology, freedom, and the human
condition.
And by the way, while this entire
conversation is in English, we make
captions and voice over audio tracks
available in multiple languages,
including Russian, Ukrainian, French,
and Hindi. On YouTube, you can switch
between language audio tracks by
clicking the settings gear icon, then
clicking audio track, and then selecting
the language you prefer.
Huge thank you once again to 11 Labs for
their help with translation and dubbing
and with the bigger mission of breaking
down barriers that language creates.
They are truly one of the most
remarkable companies I've ever had the
pleasure of working with. This is the
Lex Freedman podcast. To support it,
please check out our sponsors in the
description. And now, dear friends,
here's Pavo Durov.
You've been an advocate for freedom for
many years, writing that you should be
ready to risk everything for freedom.
What were some influences and insights
that help you arrive at this value of
human freedom? I get to experience the
difference between a society with
freedom and a society without freedom
pretty early in life. I was four years
old when my family moved from the Soviet
Union to northern Italy and I could see
that a society without freedom cannot
enjoy the abundance of opinions
of ideas of goods and services. Even for
a four or five year old kid, it was
obvious like you can't experience all
the toys, the ice cream of sorts, the
cartoons in the Soviet Union that you
can access in Italy. And then I got to
realize something even more important.
You don't get to contribute to this
abundance without freedom.
And at this point, it was pretty obvious
to me.
>> You also wrote
translates to freedom matters more than
money. How do you prevent these values
for freedom? Being corrupted by money,
by people with influence, by people with
power. Well, the biggest enemies of
freedom are fear and greed. So, you make
sure that they don't stand in your way.
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. 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
than a longer life but lived in slavery.
>> Do you contemplate your mortality? You
think about your death.
>> Oh yes.
>> Are you afraid of it?
>> In a way you have to go against your
instinct of self-preservation.
And it's not easy. We are all biological
beings hardcoded to be afraid of death.
Nobody wants to die. But when you
approach it rationally,
you live and then you die. There's no
such thing as your death in your life.
You stop experiencing life once you die.
So you have to ask yourself this
question. Is it worth living a life full
of fear of death? Or it's much more
enjoyable to forget about this and live
your life in a way that makes you immune
to this fear. At the same time,
remembering that death exists so that
every day would count.
>> Yeah. Remembering that death exists
makes you deeply feel every moment that
you do get.
>> That's why I love reminding myself that
I can die any day.
>> In many ways, uh, you live a pretty
stoic existence. I got a chance to spend
a couple of weeks with you. In many
ways, you seek to minimize the negative
effects of the outside world on your
mind.
You've uh written, quote, "If you want
to reach your full potential and
maintain clarity of mind, stay away from
addictive substances. My success and
health are the result of 20 plus years
of complete abstinence from alcohol,
tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal
drugs. Short-term pleasure isn't worth
your future. Let's talk about each one
of these. Alcohol, what's um been your
philosophy behind that?
>> That one is quite easy. When I was 11
years old, my biochemistry teacher, he
gave me this book he wrote. It was
called the illusion of paradise. And
there he would describe the biological
and chemical processes
that happen in your body once you
consume this or that substance. It was
mainly related to illegal drugs, but
alcohol was one of this addictive
substances that he covered.
So it turns out that when you drink
alcohol, the thing that happens is that
your brain cells become paralyzed.
They become literally zombies. And then
next day,
sometime after the party is over, some
of your brain cells die and never get to
normal. So think about this. 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? This
sounds ridiculous. Yeah, in many ways
it's a poison we let in our body. But by
way of advice, what what advice would
you give to people who consider not
drinking? You know, a lot of people use
alcohol
to uh enable them to have a vibrant
social life. there's a lot of pressure
from society, you know, at a party to
drink so you can socialize. So, what
advice would you give to them,
uh, to people who imagine having a
social life without alcohol? Well, first
of all, don't be afraid to be
contrarian. Set your own rules.
Secondly, if you feel you need to drink,
there must be some problem you're trying
to conceal. there's something that some
fear you're not ready to uh confront and
you have to address this fear.
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. It's
pretty benile, but this advice works.
>> Fix the underlying problem, which is
usually at the very bottom is always
going to be fear. Work on that. And very
often people are trying to escape
something in their lives with alcohol.
What is it they're trying to escape?
What is this problem? You have to get to
the bottom of it. Your mind is trying to
tell you something valuable.
And instead of addressing it directly,
you are flooding it in alcohol
which is sort of a spiritual painkiller
but works only temporarily and then you
have to pay the debt with interest. So
what do you do? I mean you've been a lot
of gatherings, a lot of parties.
Is there some challenges to saying no?
>> For me, not at all. I've been always
ready to stand my ground and say no when
I feel something is not right. And it's
extraordinary how easily
we humans are affected by what we
perceive as majority because nobody
since ancient times since million years
ago wants to be left out by the tribe.
We are scared that
we won't become accepted anymore, which
thousands of millions years ago meant
we're going to starve to death.
So we have to consciously
fight this inclination
to be agreeable 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. So that's
another fear you have to face going to a
party and the fear of being the outcast
at that party of being different than
others at that party at that social
gathering in the crowd of humans be
different. That's a fear. That's a fear
and it's quite irrational if you think
about it. It was something that made a
lot of sense
20,000 years ago. It makes zero sense
today because if you think about it, if
you do the same thing everybody else
arounds you is doing, you don't have any
competitive advantage
and you don't get to become outstanding
at some point in your life. Yeah, that's
one of the things we talked about sort
of by way of advice is if you want to be
successful in life, you want to be
different
>> differently. And perhaps I think you
said uh you want to achieve mastery at a
niche. So find a niche at which you can
pursue with all your effort and achieve
mastery and the niche being different
than anything that anybody else is
doing. Can you explain that a little bit
more? 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. But if you're doing
something that everybody else is doing
anyway,
what's the value of it? 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. At the same time
there are so many areas which you can
explore that have nothing to do with uh
the information you receive on the daily
basis. So it's extremely important to
curate the information sources that you
have.
So that you wouldn't be somebody who is
left
to the will of AI based algorithmic feed
telling you what's important
so that you end up consuming the same
information, the same stuff, the same
memes, the same news as everybody else.
But rather you should be proactive.
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. And
it's not quite it's not that difficult
to do that.
You have to just remain consistent
because nobody else is trying to do
that. Everybody else is just reading the
same news and discussing the same news
every day. But this way they don't get
to have a competitive advantage.
>> Yeah. Uh majority of the population
become slaves to the AI recommener
systems, AIdriven recommener systems.
And so the content everybody's fed is
the same thing and we all become the
same. On that point, one of the
different things you do is you don't use
a phone except occasionally to test
Telegram features. But I've been with
you for two weeks. I haven't seen you
use a phone at all in the way that most
people use a phone like for their social
media. So, can you describe your
philosophy behind that? I don't think a
phone is a necessary device.
I remember growing up I didn't have a
mobile phone.
When I was a student at the university,
I didn't have a mobile phone. When I
finally got it to use a mobile phone, I
never used phone calls.
I was always in airplane mode or mute. I
hated the idea of being disturbed.
My philosophy here is pretty simple.
I want to define
what
is important in my life. I don't want
other people or companies,
all kinds of organizations telling me
what is important today
um and what uh I should be thinking
about. Just set up your own agenda and
the phone gets in your way. It provides
distractions. It guides what you should
be looking at, what you will be looking
at. So you don't want that. You want to
quiet the mind.
You want to choose
what kind of stuff you let inside your
mind.
>> Yes. Because this way I can contribute
to the progress of society. Or at least
I like to think this way. And this makes
me happier. How often do you find quiet
time to just think and focus deeply on
work without any distractions?
You mentioned to me that you value quiet
mornings.
Yes. So the thing I'm trying to do, I
try to allocate as much time as possible
for sleep. Now even if I allocate say 11
or 12 hours for sleep, I won't sleep for
11 or 12 hours. So what I end up doing
is I end up lying in bed thinking and
some people hate it. They say you have
to take a sleeping pill but I never take
pills.
I love this moments. I get so many
brilliant ideas or at least they seem
brilliant to me at the moment while I'm
lying in bed either late in the evening
or early in the morning. That's my
favorite time of the day. Sometimes I go
I wake up, I go take a shower,
still without a phone.
Beautiful ideas can come to you while
you're doing your morning exercise, your
morning routine without a phone. 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.
Same is true in a way if
you've been consuming news from social
media late at night.
But then how do you define what is
important and what you really want to
become in life? 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. So, you definitely try to avoid
digital devices for as many hours as
possible in the morning
just to have the quiet thinking time
plus the crazy amounts of push-ups.
>> I know it's kind of kind
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. And you're supposed to be
really connected. But the conclusion you
reach very early is that the more
connected and accessible you are, the
less productive you are.
And then how can you run this thing if
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.
You know, the entire world can be
fascinated by a a fight, a quarrel
between the world's richest man and the
world's most powerful man. But for the
vast majority of these people following
this saga, it's irrelevant.
It won't change their lives. And in any
case, they can't affect it.
So, it's a bit pointless. Of course,
there are people who are engaging
activities that require them to be up to
date of of everything that's going on.
But 99% of people aren't. Yeah. The
internet, social media presents to us
drama
in such a way that we think it's the
biggest thing in the world, the most
important thing on which the tides of
history will turn. But in reality, most
things will not turn the tides of
history. And so I guess our challenge is
to figure out what is the timeless
thing. What is the thing that's
happening today that's still going to be
true in 10, 20 years?
And from that decide what you're going
to do. And that's very difficult on
social media cuz everybody's outraged.
The news of the day, whatever the
quarrel is, that's the thing that's uh
everyone thinks the world will end
because of this thing. And then another
thing happens the next day.
>> And they're trying to influence your
emotions.
>> Yeah.
>> And that's how you get into trouble
because you can be forced to make
conclusions
that are not in your best interest. I've
seen you be once again quite stoic about
your emotions. You ever get angry? You
ever get lonely? You ever get sad? The
roller coaster of human emotion. And
what do you do with that? When you make
difficult decisions. I'm a human being
like everybody else. I do get to
experience emotions and some of them are
not very pleasant. But I believe that
it's the responsibility of every one of
us
to cope with this emotions and to learn
to work through them. Self-discipline is
particularly important because without
it, how can you overcome
this
seemingly endless loop of negativity or
despair
that ultimately leads to depression for
some people? I normally never have
depression. I don't remember having
depression in the last 20 years at
least, maybe when I was a teenager.
But one of the reasons for that is
I start
doing things. I identify the problem. I
can see a solution and I start executing
the strategy.
If you are stuck in this loop of being
worried about something, nothing's ever
going to change. And people often make
this mistake thinking, "Oh, I should
just have some rest and then regain
energy." This is not how it works. You
gain energy by doing something. So you
start doing something, then it happens.
You feel motivated, you feel inspired,
and then ultimately you do something
else, a little bit more, a little bit
more. And in a few years, who know, you
may end up achieving great things. Yeah,
that's the thing that people really
confuse. If if you're stuck
in in a depressive cycle, even when you
really, really, really, really don't
want to do anything, just do something,
try try to make progress because the
good feeling comes in the end of that.
The whole point is to do first and then
feel, not feel and then do.
>> Exactly. And going to the gym is a good
example.
There are many days when you don't want
to start working out.
But they have you have to overcome this
initial reluctance
and then you get to a point that you
enjoy it and you think, "Oh my god, it
was such a good idea to come to the gym
today." But it's similar to pretty much
every activity.
You get to write some code.
Write a small piece of code first and
then you get inspired. then you'll come
up with more ideas.
You need to write a novel or just write
a paragraph.
This is pretty obvious and it's not a
secret. 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.
And this is one of them.
>> We've been working out every single day.
you have been working out for many years
pretty intensively. So I think a lot of
people would love to um know what's your
perfect daily workout regimen.
Let's say on a daily on a weekly basis.
>> I do 300 push-ups and 300 squats every
morning. And in addition to that, I go
to the gym normally five six times a
week
spending between one or two hours every
day. So, push-ups and squats are still a
big part of your routine.
>> Yes, this is how I start my day.
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
because you don't want to do this
push-ups in the morning most of the
days. Squats are particularly boring.
They're not that hard. They're just
boring.
But you overcome it and then it's much
easier to
start doing other things
related to your work. For example,
when I can, I also take a nice bath
because it's another exercise of
self-discipline. I think the main muscle
you can exercise is is this muscle, the
muscle of self-discipline,
you know, not not your biceps or or or
your pecs or anything else.
Because if you get to train that one,
everything else
just comes by itself.
>> Yeah. Everything else becomes easy. We
should mention I went with you uh to BA
and um I think it's fair to say you're
nuts
in terms of how much you can handle. Um
and I didn't even see the worst of it.
Can you can you just speak to the the
your crazy escapes in the Bay? What
value you get from it? So both the heat
and the cold,
>> I I don't know if it's crazy. I think
it's quite natural and normal by this
time.
>> Yeah.
>> But maybe I could just got used to it.
>> So ba is this uh extreme kind of sauna
practiced by Eastern Europeans.
>> Yeah.
But it is done
in a way that maximizes heat and they
also use all kind of herbs and branches
and
it's a much more holistic and natural
experience.
Then a necessary part of it is you get
the cold plunge
and then you go back. And again, this is
one of the things that maybe in the
moment is not always that pleasant,
particularly if you go to extreme
temperatures.
You don't feel great. I don't always
feel great. But this feeling is passing.
It's only a few minutes.
Same with the ice bath. you have to
suffer a bit
and then you get to feel great for hours
and days after.
What's more, it gives you this long-term
health benefits. In a way, you can look
at it as alcohol in reverse. 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.
I'd rather do banana in icebath.
>> We uh swam the length of a large lake in
France a couple times. Can you u talk
through why you value these multi-our
swims?
>> I left swimming for hours. The longest I
swam was 5 and 1/2 hours in Finland. Was
quite cold. I got lost in the process.
Barely could find my way back.
But
the reason I do it, yes, you feel great
after you're shaking a little bit. You
feel great after you cross a huge lake
and I cross many lakes. Geneva Lake,
Zurich Lake, and every time you feel
this achievement,
which
makes you happy, makes you feel strong,
and then you're more ready to other
challenges.
And of course, when you know you're
going you're going to start a journey
that will last a few hours, you're
reluctant to do it. But you swim for 10
minutes and then for 20 minutes and then
for 30 minutes
and it teaches you this incredible
patience
that I think is necessary if you want to
achieve anything in life and it's pretty
meditative lake versus ocean.
>> Yes. And you don't have to go too fast.
>> Yeah.
>> You can be slow and enjoy the moment
>> until you get lost and it's 5 and 1/2
hours. Did you panic like if you're
going to be able to find the shore, find
your way out? Not really. I'm a
reasonably stress resilient person. I
didn't panic at that moment. And there
were worse swims I had that were shorter
but involved accidents and you know
about some of them. So that wasn't the
worst by far. 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.
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. So how
can you make this go faster or how to do
you make your lungs more efficient? How
do you make your heart more efficient in
doing that? The physical activity is the
only way I know of. So, it's not just
staying healthy
or trying to look good. It's also
being
productive. It's also being stress
resilient.
All of these qualities are necessary if
you want to run a large company, if you
want to start a company.
I'm surprised when I started doing this
more than 10 years ago that more CEOs
didn't engage in sports.
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 lumacy.
Very often these two things go together.
>> So for you working out it's not just
about staying healthy. It's actually
valuable for the work that you do as a
tech leader, as a engineer, as a
technologist.
>> Oh yes. When I can't train,
I can instantly feel
that stress is creeping on me.
>> Yeah. So even in situations where I'm
constrained, I can't go to the gym. I
would just keep doing push-ups. I keep I
just keep doing squats.
>> Yeah. I mean, that's the cool thing
about body weight exercises. You can
just do it anywhere.
You can just pop off 50, 100 push-ups
before a meeting.
>> I don't you feel weird when you have a
day without physical activity?
>> Yeah. If I go a day without doing
push-ups at the very minimum, that's a
shitty day.
>> And if you can do pull-ups, it's even
better.
>> Yeah. I got to ask you about your diet,
too. No processed sugar, no fast food,
no soda, intermittent fasting, sometimes
once a day only. Sometimes a couple
times a day. Uh, so take me through your
philosophy on the no sugar, no no soda,
just clean food.
>> Well, sugar is pretty easy because it's
addictive.
The more you consume sugar, the more you
want it. The hungrier you get.
>> So if you want to stay efficient and
healthy,
why consume processed sugar? You'll just
end up snacking all the time.
intermittent fasting. So say eating only
within six hours and not eating for 18
hours every day also
brings structure into your day and into
your eating um habits. 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.
I read a few books on longevity. I think
something everybody agrees on is that
sugar is uh harmful.
No, I'm not militant about sugar. Like
you can eat berries, fruit if you feel
your body needs it,
but it's not true to think
it's necessary to consume sweet things.
Not for children, not for adults.
Red meat, I stopped eating it about 20
years ago because I just felt heavy
every time I had it. So, I guess it's
individual. It's my metabolism. My
digestive system
isn't
uh agreeing with with with this kind of
food. So, I normally eat seafood of all
kinds and vegetables. This is
the basic source of calories for me.
>> Yeah. And like all things uh you said
short-term pleasure isn't worth your
future. So a lot of things we all know
that alcohol is destructive to the body.
Tobacco, pills, processed food, sugar,
but society puts that on you. Makes it
very difficult to avoid. So I I guess it
all boils down to just discipline.
>> Yes. and trying to identify
the real cause of an issue you're
experiencing.
If you experiencing a headache, one
solution would be to take a pill and
then the headache disappears.
What this pill would actually do in most
cases, it would
mute
the consequence, your feeling of pain.
It's a painkiller.
it will not eliminate the root cause. So
you have to ask yourself what is it that
is causing this headache.
Uh do I need to drink some water?
Is the air quality here bad? Do I need
to start getting more sleep? Is there
something wrong with people around me?
They're stressing me out. There must be
some reason why you're experiencing a
headache. But if you take a pill, you're
not removing this reason. you're
actually making it worse
because this harmful factor is still
there. It's like you're piloting a
helicopter and there is some red signals
and red lamp starts to blink and and it
starts producing bad unpleasant noise.
What would you do? You would try to
figure out the cause and eliminate it.
Maybe there is some mountain next to you
and you have to avoid it or you take a
hammer and smash the signal.
I think the answer is quite obvious. So
why are we constantly doing this
regardless? Oh, because everybody else
is doing it because there's a whole
industry trying to persuade you that
this is the right thing to do.
So, it's incredibly important to analyze
yourself and try to get to the bottom of
things. So, you generally try to avoid
all pills, all pharmaceutical products.
Yes, I've been staying away from all of
that since I became an adult. When
you're a teenager, your mom would
typically say, "We need to take this
pill, otherwise you know, the world
collapses." Um, yeah. Yeah,
>> once I became a grown-up, I said, "No, I
don't think that the producers of pill
are incentivized in the right way. They
are not really interested in eliminating
the root of the problem. They would
rather have me dependent
on the pills they're producing
um so that I could buy them forever."
And then I also realized, no, I'm not
saying that you should never take pills.
There obviously is some diseases
that you can only fight with
antibiotics, for example.
So I'm not suggesting we go back to the
middle ages.
Uh but what I'm saying is we overuse
pills. Yeah, it's always good to uh
study and deeply understand the
incentives under which the world
operates so that you don't get swept up
into the forces that operate under these
incentives and big pharma is certainly
one of them. Pharmaceutical companies
have a huge incentive to keep the
problem going versus solving the
problem. It's wise. Well, this is
something I practice every day. I read
some piece of news and I ask myself
who benefits from me reading this. 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
buy some product,
support some political cause, fight some
war, donate some money. Let's do
something that would benefit other
people. And this is not a problem to
support causes that you truly believe in
as long as it was your intentional
choice and you're not being manipulated
into fighting other people's wars. And
that takes us back to the original thing
we started talking about which is
freedom. One of the ways to achieve
freedom of thought is to remove your
mind from
uh the influences, the forces that
manipulate you. That's really important
to realize. the the content you consume,
especially on the internet, when a large
percentage of it is designed to
manipulate your mind, you have to
disconnect yourself and be very
proactive understanding what the biases,
what the incentives are so you can think
clearly, independently and objectively.
And again, it ties back with uh
restraint from alcohol.
Yeah. Because if your mind is clouded,
how can you analyze yourself? You'll
always be def dependent on opinions of
others.
You will always follow the mainstream.
And with then whatever the authorities
or whoever in charge will tell you, you
believe it because you don't have a tool
of your own to rely on to come to your
own conclusions.
I have to ask you this. This is
something that came up. You don't watch
porn. I don't think I've heard you talk
about this before. What's the philosophy
behind not watching porn? You know,
there's a lot of people that talk about
uh porn in general having a very
negative effect on young men on their
view of the world, on their development
of their sexuality, and how they uh get
into relationships and all that kind of
stuff. So, what's your philosophy in not
consuming porn? 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. If
anything,
it just forces you to exchange some
energy,
some inspiration to a fleeting moment of
pleasure. Doesn't make sense. And in any
case, as I said, it's not the real
thing. So, as long as you can u access
the real thing, you don't need to watch
porn.
But then if you can't access the real
thing, it's you shouldn't watch porn as
well because it means there's some
deficiency in your life, some problem
that you have to overcome.
>> Yeah. Analyze the underlying cause.
Uh and again this goes back to the theme
of investing in uh long-term flourishing
versus uh short-term pleasure.
There's this there's a theme to the way
you approach life. I try to be
strategic. I try to act under assumption
that I'm not going to die in 1 hour from
now and I'm going to stick around for a
bit despite the fact that we are all
mortal. So, why would I exchange the mid
and longterm for the short term? Doesn't
make any sense. Quick pause. Bathroom
break. Yeah, let's take a break. All
right, we took a break and now we're
back. I got to ask you about Telegram,
the company. I got to meet some of the
brilliant engineers that work there.
Telegram runs lean. Relative to other
technology companies that achieve the
scale that Telegram does, it has very
few employees. So how many people are on
the core team? Let's say the core
engineering team.
>> The core engineering team is about 40
people.
This includes
back end, front end,
designers,
system administrators.
>> Can you speak to the philosophy behind
uh running
a company with so few employees?
Well, what we realized really early is
that
quantity of employees doesn't translate
to quality of the product they produce.
In many cases is the opposite.
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.
The other problem with having too many
employees is that
some of them won't get enough work to
do. And if they don't get enough work to
do, they demotivate everybody else by
their mere existence.
They're still there. They're still
getting the salary, but they don't do
anything. And if they don't do anything,
more often than not, they will start
trying to
find their purpose elsewhere.
Maybe inside your team, but not by doing
productive work,
but by finding problems that don't exist
within the team. And that can disrupt
the team and
the mood inside it even further.
Also, when you intentionally don't allow
some of your team members to hire more
people to help them,
they will be forced to automate things.
In our case,
you know, we have tens of thousands of
servers around the world, almost 100,000
distributed across several continents
and data centers. If you try to manage
this system
manually
without automation, you will probably
end up hiring thousands of people, tens
of thousands of people. But if you rely
on algorithms and the team is forced to
put together algorithms
in order to manage it, then it becomes
much more scalable and much more
efficient and interestingly much more
reliable as well
>> and more resilient to the changing
geopolitics, to the changing technology,
all of that. Cuz if you automate
the distributed aspect of the data
storage and all the compute, then that's
going to be resilient to everything the
world throws at you. I suppose if you
have people managing all of it, it
becomes stale quickly. Yes, humans are
attack vectors
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. This is what we've did with
Tilgrim
while also making it much more reliable
because if some part of the network goes
down, you can still switch to the other
parts of it.
>> Yeah. One of the big um
ways you protect your privacy is that
you store the data. The infrastructure
side of Telegram is distributed across
um many legal jurisdictions with the
decryption keys. So it's encrypted in
the cloud. The decryption keys are split
and kept in different locations so that
uh no single government or entity can uh
uh access the data. Can you explain the
strength of this approach? The way we
designed Telegram is
we never wanted to have any humans, any
employees have any access to private
messaging data.
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. Like if you
hire an employee or any of the existing
employee, they can't break the system in
a way that would allow them to access
messages of users. And then of course we
launched and an encrypted messaging that
is even more protected but it's has
certain limitations. So you still have
to rely on encrypted cloud. So an
interesting engineering challenge was
how you make sure that no point of
failure can be created within your team
or outside.
>> So no employee can even access user
messages. So that's the thing you know
we talk about encryption, we talk about
privacy, we talk about security, all
these kinds of things. I think the
number one thing that people are
concerned about about which there's also
misinformation is about private
messages.
So Telegram is very very protective of
the private messages of users. So you're
saying employees never can access
the private messages.
Have any governments or intelligence
agencies ever accessed private user
messages in the past? No. Never.
Telegram has never shared a single
private message with anyone including
governments and intelligence services.
If you try to access any server in any
of the data center locations, it's all
encrypted.
You can extract all the hard drives and
analyze it,
but you won't get anything. It's all
encrypted in the way that is
undecipherable.
That was very important for us. That's
why we can say with confidence there
hasn't been
ever
a leakage of data any leak of data from
telegram not in terms of private
messages not in terms of say contact
lists. Uh do you see in the future a
possible scenario where uh you might
share uh user private messages with
governments or with intelligence
agencies? No,
we design a system in a way that's
impossible.
It would require us to change the system
and we won't do that because we made a
promise to our users. We would rather
shut Telegram down in a certain country
than do that.
>> So that's like one of the principles you
operate under is you're going to protect
user privacy.
>> I think it's fundamental. Without the
right to privacy, people can't feel
fully free and protected.
>> I mean, this is a good good place to to
ask. I'm sure you're pressured by all
kinds of people, all kinds of
organizations to share
private data. What uh where do you find
the strength
and the fearlessness to say no to
everybody, including powerful
intelligence agencies, including
powerful governments, influential,
powerful people? I guess part of it is
just me being me. I stood up
for myself and for my values since I was
a little kid.
I was had issues with my teachers
because I would point out their mistakes
during classes. And at the end of the
day, what's important is to remind
yourself that you have nothing to lose.
Like they can think they they blackmail
you with something. They can threaten
you with something, but what is it they
really can can really do to you? Like
worst case, they can kill you. But that
brings us back to the first part of our
discussion.
There's no point living your life in
fear.
As for Telegram, it's incredibly
successful, but if we lose one market or
two markets or pretty much all of the
markets, I don't care that much. It
won't affect me. It won't affect my
lifestyle in any way. I will still be
doing my push-ups, you know.
So
>> yeah,
>> you
>> you don't like encryption, you don't
like privacy, you think you should ban
encryption in your country like the
European Union is trying to do now for
all the member states. Well, go ahead
and do that. We'll just quit this
market. We won't operate there. It's not
that important. They all think that
somehow we profit from their citizens
and the only goal tech companies have is
extracting revenues. And it's true. Most
tech companies are like this.
But there are projects like Telegram
which are a bit different
and I'm not sure they realize that. So
for you the value of maintaining your
integrity
um in relation to your principles is
more important than than anything else.
And of course we should say that you
also have full ability and control to do
just that because you Po Durov own 100%
of Telegram. So there's no other
anybody with a say on this question.
>> There are no shareholders
which is quite unique.
>> Very unique. I don't think there's
anything even close to that in any major
tech company.
>> And this allows us to operate the way we
operate
to build this project and maintain it
based on certain
fundamental principles which by the way
I think everybody believes in. I think
the right to privacy is included in the
constitution of most countries, at least
most western countries. But it's still
under attack almost every week
and it often starts with well-meaning
proposals. Oh, we have to fight crime.
We have to do that. We have to protect
the children. But at the end of the day,
the result is the same. People lose
their right to such fundamental thing as
privacy. They sometimes lose their right
to express themselves, to assemble. 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 author
autocratic.
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."
They all justified it
with very reasonable sounding
justifications and then it came in
stages gradually and after a few years
people would find themselves in a
position when they're helpless. They
can't protest.
Every message they send is monitored.
They can't assemble.
It's over.
So you see telegram is a place that
people from all walks of life from every
nation can have a place
to speak their mind to have a voice
in the context in the geopolitical
context you're mentioning that
governments when they become autocratic
naturally is the way of the world human
nature and the nature of governments
they become more sensorious they begin
to censor and always justifying it in
their minds perhaps assuming that
they're doing good. Perhaps some of them
assume they doing good, but
interestingly
it always results in the state
accumulating more power at the expense
of the individual.
And then where does it stop?
You know, we humans are not very good at
finding the right balance and in this
case the right balance between chaos and
order,
between freedom and structure.
We tend to go to extremes.
I think you still consider yourself a
libertarian.
There is something about government that
always
over time naturally builds a larger and
larger bureaucracy and in that machine
of bureaucracy it accumulates more and
more power and it's not always that some
one individual member of that
bureaucracy is the one that corrupts the
initial principles on which the
government was founded. It's just
something over time you forget. You
begin to censor,
you begin to limit uh the the freedoms
of the individual, the ability of the
individuals to speak, to have a voice,
to vote. It just gradually happens that
way. And the government is not some
abstract notion. The government consists
of people.
And these people have goals.
they would naturally be inclined to
increase their level of influence to
have more subordinates to have more
resources
and that's how you end up in an endless
loop of
you everinccreasing taxes
everinccreasing regulation
which ultimately just suffocates free
market, free enterprise and free speech.
So you do want to have very very strict
limitations on the extent the government
can increase its powers at the expense
of citizens. Ironically, you don't have
those limitations. You're supposed in in
all countries of which are considered to
be free.
It's supposed to be the constitution
that protects everybody.
But interestingly, it doesn't work
always this way. They are able to find
very tricky phrasings in order to cover
out exceptions
and then the exception becomes the rule.
On this topic,
I'd love to talk to you about the recent
saga of you being arrested in August of
last year in France. I think I should
say that it's one of the worst
overreaches of power I've seen as
applied to a tech leader in recent
history in all history.
Uh so it's it's tragic, but I think
speaks to the thing that we've been
talking about. So um maybe can you tell
the full saga what happened? You arrive
in France. I arrived in France last year
in August just for a short two-day trip
and then I see a dozen of armed
policemen
greeting me and ask me to follow them.
They read me a list of
something like 15 serious crimes that
I'm accused of,
which was mindboggling.
At first, I thought there must be some
mistake.
Then I realized they're being serious
and they accusing me of all possible
crimes that the users of Telegram have
allegedly committed. with some users
and they think I should be responsible
for this
which again like you said it's nothing
it's something that never happened in
the history of this planet.
No country not even an
authoritarian one
did that to any tech leader
at least at this scale. 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.
So they
uh put me in a police car and I found
myself in police custody.
A small room, no windows.
just a narrow bed made of concrete.
I spent four day almost four days there.
In the process, I had to answer some
questions of the policemen.
They were interested and
how telegram operates.
Most of it is public anyway. And I was
struck by
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. I mean, there's
something darkly poetic about a tech
founder of a platform where a billion
people are communicating with each other
and you're on concrete, no pillow for
days, no windows. It's like a book. I
mean, it reminds me I'm a huge fan of
France Kafka and he's written about the
absurdity uh of these kinds of
situations, hence the Kafka-esque
stories. There's a story literally about
the situation that he wrote, perhaps
predicted called the trial where a
person is arrested for no reason that
anybody can explain and is stuck in the
judicial system for a long time that
nobody fascinatingly in that story
neither the person arrested nor the any
individual member of the system itself
fully understand what is happening. uh
nobody can truly answer the questions
and eventually the person spoiler alert
is mentally broken by the whole system
which is what bureaucracy can do in its
most absurd form is it breaks the spirit
the human spirit laden in all of us
that's the negative side of bureaucracy
I agree with you on the absurdity of
this
thing
because if this was a good faith attempt
to fix an issue.
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, the
way every other country on this planet
solves its problems, including with
Telegram. And we did its times.
>> Yeah. They have a nice page showing this
is kind of like details that most people
don't really think about. Uh but
Telegram is at the forefront of um
moderating
CSAM and terrorist groups. There's a
nice page telegram.org/modderation
/modderation that shows just the
incredible amount of groups and channels
that are uh engaged in terrorist
activity and cam activity that are
blocked actively blocked found and
blocked by telegram. So and a lot of
this work like you said because of the
automation is done with machine learning
just the scale is insane. This is stuff
that most like noobs like me who are
just chatting it up on Telegram don't
think about. But there's just like an
immense number of
people essentially
doing things that violate the law on
there and you have to find them
immediately and catch it. I guess all
platforms have to deal with it and
Telegram was doing a great job of
dealing with that kind of content. And
what you're saying is the French
government
had no idea.
Do they even know what machine learning
is?
>> 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. That's my hope. In
any case, you're right. I mean, if if
you look at Telegram, we've been
fighting
harmful content that is publicly
distributed on our platform since 10
years ago.
Actually since the time we launched
public channels on Telegram and since
something like eight years ago, we had
daily transparency reports
on how many channels related to child
abuse or terrorist propaganda
we taking down daily. Every day we've
taken like maybe
we would take down
hundreds of them. 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. And then somebody
would read the newspaper, get enraged
because they would uh 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.
>> Yeah, I think we should make pretty
clear that there's no world, no reason
that the French government should have
arrested you, but here we are. That's
the situation you're in. So, to be
clear, you have to show up in front of a
judge. All of this is beautifully
absurd. It would be hilarious if it
wasn't extremely serious. You have to
show up in front of a judge
every certain amount of time. And what
is that experience like? In France, they
have this role of investigative judge. I
don't think you have it in many other
places in the world. It means I'm not on
trial.
I'm being investigated.
And in France, it's not just the police
or prosecutor asking me questions. It's
a judge,
which in my experience is more like
still a prosecutor, but it's called a
judge. And that makes it harder to
appeal. So if you're limited in say
countries where you can travel, then to
appeal that restriction will take you a
lot of time. The investigation itself
should have never been started. It's uh
an absurd and harmful
um
way of solving an issue such comp as
complicated as uh
regulating social media.
It's just the wrong tool.
So we
objected and appealed the investigation
itself. We did last year I believe.
We are still not even given
a hearing date for the appeal
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. You have other
entrepreneurs affected by u the French
dust system
telling me horror stories about their
experiences
where businesses
got paralyzed
by very unnecessary actions of
investigative judges that ended up being
unjustified and biased. And in the end
you can perhaps solve it when you reach
a higher
court
and you'll get justice
but you'll lose a lot of time and energy
in the process.
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.
I mean, but it does, as Kofka describes,
break a lot of people with time. So,
when do you hope we should say that you
were for a long time not allowed to
travel out of France, now
you can travel to Dubai. We're now in
Dubai.
Got to meet
um many of the people that work at
Telegram. Telegram is headquartered in
Dubai, but you're not allowed to travel
anywhere else. When do you think you're
coming to Texas
to hang out with me over there?
>> That's a hard question to answer because
it doesn't depend on just my actions.
I can just say this.
I am patient.
I will
not let this limitation on my
freedom
dictate my actions.
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
when you don't even know what's going on
in the world
in relation to you personally. So, I
have no crystal ball that would tell me
the future. I can't say that I'm
pessimistic. I think we've been able to
gradually remove
most of the restrictions initially
imposed on my freedom
last August.
If uh the French government or the
French intelligence agency
want to have a back door or a way to
access private user messages,
uh what would you say to them?
Is there anything they can do to get
access to the private user messages?
Nothing.
My response would be very clear,
but it won't be very polite. So I'm not
sure it's
>> it's good to say here.
>> It's good to say because you're wearing
a tie and
>> yeah it's a serious adult gentlemanlike
program. Yeah. But that is a concern
that people have is when you have so
much pressure from governments that over
time they'll wear you down and you'll
give in
and then of course other places
use that as propaganda to try to attack
you. You get attacked by basically every
every nation. So um it's a difficult
medium in which to operate. It's
difficult to be you fighting for
freedom, fighting to preserve people's
privacy. But is there something you
could say to reassure people that you're
not going to sacrifice any of the
principles that you've just expressed?
If the French government just keeps
wearing you down,
>> I think the French government is losing
this battle. This battle is wrong.
The more pressure
I get,
the more
resilient and defined 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,
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 in this case in
particular the French government
tries to force me do anything.
And I would rather lose everything I
have than yield to this pressure.
Because if you submit to this pressure
and agree with something that is
fundamentally wrong and the it violates
rights of other people as well,
you become broken inside. You become a
shell of your former self
on a deep biological and spiritual
level.
So I wouldn't do that. There are
probably other people in the world that
would consider that, but I don't care.
Tilgrim disappears to something people
don't understand, including in this uh
intelligence services or governments. I
don't care.
I'll be fine
if they put me into prison for 20 years,
which let's be clear, it's not something
that I think is realistic, but let's
just think about it as a hypothetical
situation.
I would rather starve myself to death
and die there. Reboot the whole game
than do something stupid.
Let me ask you about an example of the
thing you're talking about. Tell the
saga of Telegram in in the Romanian
election. So amidst all this, you are
still fighting to preserve the freedom
of speech. What happened and what were
some of the decisions you had to make?
So when I got stuck in France, unable to
leave the country for a few months,
I was offered to meet the head of state
foreign intelligence services through a
person I know quite well. He's actually
a
well-known uh tech entrepreneur in
France and he's well connected. And he
said, "This guy wants to meet you." I
said, "Okay, fine. Let's do that, but
I'm not promising anything.
I took the meeting and in this meeting
I was asked
to restrict what I see as restriction of
freedom of speech in Romania.
I don't know if you followed the whole
saga with the Romanian elections. They
had a presidential elections last year.
The results got cancelled.
Now, Romania at that point when I had
this meeting was preparing for a new
presidential elections, the conservative
candidate was not somebody who the
French government was supportive of.
So they asked me whether I would be
shutting down or ready to shut down
channels on Telegram
that supported the conservative
candidate
or protest against
the pro-Uropean candidates. So they
called the guy they liked. I said look
if there is no violation of the rules of
telegram which are quite clear
you can't call to violence but if if
it's a peaceful demonstration if it's a
peaceful debate
we can't do this it's would be political
censorship
we protected freedom of speech in many
countries in the world including in Asia
in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
we're not going to start engaging in
censorship in Europe,
no matter who is asking us. I was very
clear to the guy who is the head of
French intelligence.
I said, "If you think
that because I'm stuck here, you can
tell me what to do, you're very wrong.
I would rather do the opposite every
time."
And in a way, that's what I did. I um
um
had a small debate with him about the
morality of the whole thing and then at
a certain point just disclose the
content of this entire conversation
because I never signed an ND. 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
trying to get advantage
of this situation. Of course, if you
know they had nothing to do with the
start of this investigation itself
and use it to reach their political or
geopolitical goals,
I consider it an attempt to humiliate
myself personally and
millions of Telegram users collectively.
And it's quite strange that the same
agency asked us to do certain things in
Muldova as well. So even before that, I
think it was October last year or
September, I was arrested in Paris in
late August
and then again approached through an
intermediary and asked, "Would you mind
taking down some channels in Muldova
because there's an election going on and
we're afraid they're going to be some
interference with this elections.
could you please
connect with the
representatives of the government of
Muldova and take care of it? 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 and they sent us
a list of channels and bots. Some of
them were so was a very short list and
some of these channels and bots were
in violation indeed of our rules and we
took them down only a few of them.
The rest were okay.
Then they said thank you and send us
another list of
dozens of channels, many many channels.
We looked at these channels. We realized
that there is no solid foundation
to justify banning them
and we refuse to do that.
But interestingly enough,
the
French intelligence services
that
were asking us
to
do this in Muldova,
let me know
through their contact
that
after Telegram banned, the few channels
that were in violation of our rules in
Muldova.
They talked to my judge, the
investigative judge in this
investigation that is started is has
been started against me
and told the judge good things about me
which I found very confusing
and in a way shocking because
these two matters have nothing in
common.
Why would anyone talk to an
investigative judge that is trying to
find out whether Telegram did a good
enough job in uh
removing illegal content in France?
What does Muldova have to do with it?
I got very suspicious at that moment.
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.
Not extreme views, not views that call
to violence.
That was extremely alarming. That was a
moment when
I told myself that there may be more
going on here that I initially thought.
Initially I thought
yeah some people are confused about how
technology works
and here but after this case in Muldova
I got much more suspicious. So by the
time the head of intelligence services
met me to ask about Romania
to help them silencing silencing
conservative voices in Romania, I was
already wary
of what can be going on next. Yeah. So
clearly this was a systematic attempt to
pressure you to censor political voices
that uh the French government doesn't
agree with. And we should say that
you're you have fought for freedom of
speech
for leftwing groups and right-wing
groups. It really doesn't matter.
So it's not you don't have a political
affiliation, political ideology that you
fight for. You're creating a platform
that as long as they don't call for
violence
uh allows people from all walks of life,
from all ideologies to speak their mind.
That's the whole point. And it happens
to be conservative voices in the
remaining election that the French
government want to censor because
currently the French government leans
left. But if you flip everything around
and the government would be rightwing,
you'd be fighting for um against
censorship of leftwing voices. And you
have in the past many times.
>> Exactly. Ironically, we received a
request from the French police to take
down a channel of far-left protesters on
Telegram in France.
We refuse to do that. We look to the
channel, peaceful protesters.
Doesn't matter for us whether we're
defending the freedom of speech of
people leaning right or leaning left.
During co we were protecting
activists that were organizing the black
life matter
events
and the other side the the protesters
against lockdowns.
We pro we protect everybody as long as
they are
not crossing the lines and not starting
to
call to violence or
incight damage to public property.
It's a fundamental right to assemble.
It's interesting that
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 comp compromise
your values, your principles, your
freedoms, your rights.
because they don't understand what's at
stake.
>> Yeah. These things uh become a slippery
slope. So you've uh for many many years
including currently have spoken very
highly of France. You love French
history, French culture.
I think this situation, this historic
wrong that's been done is uh
put simply is just a gigantic PR mistake
for France. There's no entrepreneur that
sees that aspires to be the next Padurov
to create the next Telegram sees this
and wants to operate in France after
seeing this. There is no justification
for this arrest. There's a mislication
of the law, all kinds of pressures, all
kinds of behavior that seems politically
motivated, all that kind of stuff. All
the excessive regulation and the
bureaucracy, a nightmare for
entrepreneurs that dream to create
something impactful and positive for the
world. So what what do you think needs
to be fixed about the French government,
the French system and then zooming out
because you have see similar kinds of
things in Europe that uh could enable
entrepreneurs that could reverse the
trend that we seem to be seeing in
Europe that become is becoming less and
less friendly to uh entrepreneurs.
What can be fixed? What should be fixed?
I think the European society must
decide
where
they want the everinccreasing
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
maybe as much or more than in the latest
stage of the Soviet Union.
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.
The startup field and my field social
media field has been affected by it
immensely.
There was one great startup in this
uh realm in France in the last 10 years.
It was a location-based social network
was eventually sold to Snapchat. But
before it was not sold, the founder
asked me whether he should sell. I told
him never sell. You have a great thing
going. You have lots of users. You have
organic traction in many countries. and
the first of the kind of this kind
success story in France
but then he sold anyway in a couple
weeks and later I met him he's trying to
do a new thing now I met him and I asked
him like I was trying to understand what
went wrong and one of the things he told
me about is that while he was trying to
run his company you know competing with
Facebook Instagram Instagram, Snapchat,
having all this pressure from investors,
trying to hire the best people and
persuade them to go to Paris.
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
which lasted forever and was gradually
sucking blood of his team and his
company. constant
interrogations,
disclosure requests
and you know this is a young company.
>> Mhm.
>> It significantly increases the level of
stress and at some point I think the
pressure was too much. He decided to I'm
going to just sell it.
Eventually it turned out that
there was no issue. The investigation
ended, as far as I understand, with no
charges. But such investigations, they
have a price. They have a cost. 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
resulting in decreased economic growth,
things won't change.
I I think we just talked to a guy a few
days ago
who left France and started a business
here in Dubai. 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. And this investigation
that involved taxes lasted for many many
years. I believe he said eight years.
And at the end of this eight years,
the government reached to the conclusion
that there was nothing wrong. He's good.
It's okay.
In the meantime,
his corporate bank accounts were frozen.
His business died.
The only reason why he was able
to retain sanity is because he moved to
Dubai and started a new company which is
incredibly successful and now he's
enriching this city which we're in right
now with his great ideas and creativity.
And by the way, uh, you know, having
interacted with him, there's like a fire
in his eyes, the human spirit that fuels
entrepreneurship, whatever that is, he
doesn't have to do. He's made a lot of
money. He probably doesn't have to do
anything, but he still wants to create.
And that fire is what fuels great
nations. Build, build, build, build new
stuff, expand, all of that. And
regulation suffocates that.
>> You have to cherish this people.
>> Yeah. But I guess the French public or
some part of the French public was
misled
and I don't know when may perhaps since
the time of the French Revolution to
believe that entrepreneurs are somehow
their enemies. They're the evil rich
people that
are the cause of all problems. 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.
In reality though, a lot of these people
that are starting such companies with
fire in their eyes are sacrificing their
lives, their livelihood. They're they're
working 20 hours a day. They're
experiencing immense stress
in order to fulfill their vision and
bring value and good to the society
around them. They create jobs, they
create great services, they create great
goods, they make your country grow, they
make your people proud. You have to
cherish them.
But what does the system do to them? It
squeezes them out
because you perhaps there was somebody
in the
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.
And now the same entrepreneur by the way
who we talked to is invited to go come
back to France. He's been offered really
good terms. He said you're going to open
this new venue on Shanz. We're going to
give you the best location. We're going
to fund part of it.
Tax breaks. And he said, "Never. Just
forget about this. It's impossible. I'm
not coming back to France." He's
traumatized by the experience. And he's
French. He was born there. He has a
French passport. So unless things like
this change, France will and the rest of
Europe will keep struggling with
economic growth, with budget deficits,
with unemployment
and all the other relevant social and
economic metrics. Yeah, it's
heartbreaking.
me as uh many of these nations. I
appreciate the historic and the cultural
value. And I hope Europe and France
flourish, but this is not the components
that required for flourishing.
Quick pause. I need a bathroom break.
All right, we had some tea. We're back.
Let's go back uh a bunch of years to the
beginning. You mentioned you went to
school with a super intensive education.
So, I thought it'd be really interesting
to look at some of the powerful aspects
of that education from the languages to
the math. Can you actually describe some
of the rigorous aspects of it and what
you gained from it?
>> At the age of 11, I got the opportunity
to enter an experimental school in St.
Petersburg where I lived and you had to
pass a rigorous test to 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 maths
and foreign languages.
Then there will be some changes in the
brain of the student that will allow the
student to understand most other
disciplines. But we had a class as a
result that didn't have any single
focus. It was very widespread across a
lot of disciplines.
You would have four foreign languages at
least including Latin, English, French,
German. In addition, you can get ancient
Greek. You would have classes like
biochemistry or psychoanalysis or
evolutionary psychology.
The difference of this class as opposed
to other classes in the same school
which was part of the St. in Petersburg
State University
and called academic gymnasium was that
unlike other classes which were
specialized in some single subject like
physics or maths or history,
this one tried to get
the best from all of the specialized
classes and bringing into one
curriculum.
Since it was an experimental class,
it wasn't possible to become a straight
A student to be excellent in all the
subject.
It was like considered crazy to even
try. So it's assumed nobody's able to
handle it. You're just pushing the
limits of the human mind. Four languages
in parallel, math, evolutionary
psychology, just overwhelming the mind
and see what happens.
>> Yes. See what happen. This was an
experiment.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And it was in the middle of
the '9s, remember when
Russia, particularly its educational
system, wasn't regulated as much as it
is today. It was
in the middle between the two stages of
the Russian history, the Soviets
history, and the modern Russian history
of the 21st century.
In any case,
I learned a lot from that experience.
First of all, why I got into the school
is because I kept being kicked out from
other schools.
>> Challenging authority.
>> I was good at all subjects but not
behavior. You know, we had this
behavior grade in the Soviet Union and
and early '90s.
Perhaps they even have it today. I'm not
sure. I was very bad at behavior. Always
challenging the teachers, always
pointing out their mistakes.
>> By the way, that's not such a bad thing,
right? Like if you were looking back,
there's some value to that, right? For
young people to maybe respectfully but
challenge the authority,
the wisdom of old, right?
I think I was very lucky to be able to
do that and to be able to get away with
it in the end because normally if you
keep challenging authorities,
you just get kicked out of all schools
and then you end up nowhere. 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.
But at that point, I was pretty bored
with my life. You know, every teenager
gets to a point when they have this sort
of existential crisis. What's the point
of life?
What am I even doing here?
At some point, I decided
since I have to go to school anyway,
I might as well try to do something
impossible and become the best students
and get a an A or what we called five in
the Russian system
on every single subject.
And that kept me busy for a while.
It was incredibly difficult
because you didn't have enough time.
Even if you just studied all the time,
not doing anything else, you didn't have
any time left to prepare all the
homework
tasks and get ready for all the tests.
So I ended up using the breaks between
classes but I get to the result I wanted
to get to. I got the excellent
mark in every subject
and that kept kept me happy for a while.
What did you understand about an
effective education system from studying
four languages at the same time doing
such a diversity? Like if you were to
design education system from scratch for
young people especially in the 21st
century, what would that look like? You
posted about the value of mathematics as
a foundation for everything.
>> Yeah, I still think math is essential.
It's something that shapes your brain.
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,
trying again if it doesn't work. And
this is exactly the same skill you need
in programming,
in project management, in starting when
you start your own company.
And it's one of the few subjects in
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.
That is extremely valuable. And of
course, once you're good at math,
you can apply it
in physics, in engineering, in coding.
And it's not surprising that most of the
most successful tech founders and CEOs
are very good at math and coding
because ultimately it's the same
mental
skill that you rely on.
But back then in the school I realized
something else as well. It's that
competition is really important.
Competition is key.
This is what motivates a lot of
teenagers when they're at school.
And if you remove competition out of the
education system, you end up
forcing kids to start competing
elsewhere. For example, in video games.
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.
We don't want them to feel anxiety, so
let's just get rid of all the public
grading system, all this rankings of who
won, who lost. We don't want any of
that." And part of it is justified. But
as a result,
some kids lose interest.
Yes, you eliminate the losers, but you
end up eliminating the winners as well.
And then if you're 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,
for customers
and it's more brutal. 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.
They still persist. They still think
competition is a bad thing. 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
but as a result they make their entire
systems less competitive. The entire
economies,
some of them in Europe
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.
So this is a hard choice any
civilization has to make.
We support competition understanding
that in eventually it leads to progress
in science and technology
and abundance for the society at large.
Or we remove competition thinking that
somehow we can shield the future
generations
from the stress
that competition inevitably causes.
>> Yeah. I mean it's grounded in a good
instinct of compassion. And you don't
want people who are who suck at a thing
to feel pain. But it seems like struggle
is a part of life. Either you do it
early or you do it later. And it's true.
That's such a good point that
competition does seem to be a really
powerful driver of skill development.
Like you mentioned pursuing mastery.
There's something in human nature that
especially for for young people. If you
can compete at a thing, you're going to
be really driven to get good at that
thing. If you can direct that in the
education system as China does, as many
as many nations like you mentioned do,
then you're going to develop a lot of
brilliant people, resilient people,
people that are ready to create epic
shit in the world. I 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.
And this is one of the ways society
self-regulates.
Speaking of competition, uh your brother
Nikolai, he's a mathematician,
programmer, expert in cryptography. He
has won the IMO International
Mathematics Olympiad. He got gold medal
three times, ICBC programming two times,
has two PhDs in mathematics,
and you have worked together for many
years creating um incredible
technologies that we've been talking
about. So, what have you learned about
just life from your brother?
>> Well, first of all, I must say I learned
pretty much everything from my brother.
Everything I know because when we were
used to be kids,
we slept in the same bedroom like beds
few feet away from each other. And um
I kept bugging him with questions. I
would ask him about dinosaurs and
galaxies and black holes and
Neanderthalss,
everything I could think of. And he was
my Wikipedia back in the time when we
didn't have internet access. He's a
unique prodigy kid, probably one of a
billion. He started reading at the age
of three, I think. And he pretty fast
got so advanced in maths. By the age of
six, he could already read really
sophisticated books on astronomy.
Sometimes when he did it in public
places like buses or
metro, my mom was criticized by people
who were witnessing it. They would tell
her, "Why are you mocking your own kid
with this serious book? It's obvious the
the kid can't understand everything
there. It's too complicated. Even we
don't understand anything there. There's
some formulas."
And he was already
sucking in this knowledge. He's just
has this thirst for information.
So he was the source of all kind of
great facts,
useful things, inspiring things.
He taught me pretty much everything I
know. At the same time, he's incredibly
modest
and kind. And this is something I think
a lot of
people
that think they're smart but not
generally intelligent lack.
More often than not, people who are
truly intelligent, they're also kind and
compassionate.
>> And he is that.
>> Definitely.
>> You actually have been staying out of
the public eye for the most part. You've
done very few interviews. You're pretty
lowkey, but your brother is in another
level. He's been staying out of the
public eye. What's behind that?
>> Part of it is his natural modesty.
He doesn't need to do it.
He doesn't feel this urge to show off,
brag about stuff.
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
which can result and
strange situations,
some of uh which we discussed earlier.
For example, this French investigation.
Yeah, I've gotten to know you more and
more and there's a deep integrity uh to
you that I think is good to show to the
world. There's a lot of attack vectors
on user privacy and I think the most
important the last
wall of protection is the actual people
that are running the company. So it's
important to some degree for you to be
out there to showing your true self. Uh
so we should say that also you didn't
mention but you were a programmer
from an early age. You co started coding
at 10. first things you built were a
video game at 11 and then eventually 10
years later in 21 you programmed the
initial versions of VK single-handedly.
Can you talk to me about your
programming journey that led to the
creation of VK? What was the VK stack?
Is it PHP mostly? How did you figure out
how to program websites? All that I
wasn't interested in programming
websites at first. I didn't even have
access to the internet when I was 10
years old. But I liked video games. I
didn't have enough of them. And the
scarcity forced me to start building
them more computer games just to play
myself.
>> Yeah.
>> It's actually an interesting thing that
we sometimes don't realize it, but
scarcity leads to creativity.
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
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 turnbased
strategy.
Of course, two-dimensional back then,
threedimensional was too much for me,
but it wasn't as
sleek in terms of the scrolling FPS
frames per second
um parameter and asked my brother how to
optimize it. he would guide me and this
kind of
learning and
training really shaped my coding skills
when I was younger. Then I started to
create video games for my classmates
when we played for example tic-tac-toe
on an infinite field in my class during
the breaks, you know, and not
tic-tac-toe that three in a row. This is
what five in a row and and an infinite
field. This is a much more interesting
game and it gets quite complicated if
you keep playing it. My classmates used
to love it and some of my classmates
were really smart, you know, champions
of math Olympians, sons and daughters of
professors at the university. And I
decided, no, I want to win every single
time.
>> I don't want to lose even a single time.
So, how do I win? I need to practice
more. But how do I practice more? I need
an opponent stronger than myself. So, I
coded this game so that I would play
against the computer.
and the computer would calculate, I
think, four moves in advance
to choose the optimal strategy.
That wasn't enough. Four moves in
advance, I would still win over it. If I
tried to calculate five or six, it was
too slow. So, I asked my brother to help
me out here. So, he made this algorithm.
Eventually,
I
trained myself to win every single time,
even with the computer back then.
We didn't have uh modern CPUs and um I
could still retain some self-confidence.
We go back to school during breaks, play
with my classmates,
and soon people started to lose
interest. None of my classmates wanted
to play this game anymore. I killed the
game. There isn't.
>> Yeah.
>> So after that
when I got into the St. Petersburg State
University
it was quite boring just to study
because it was too easy. So I thought
what can I do there? I created a website
for the students of my faculty. First,
I organized the creation of digital
answers to all exams
and digitalist version of all lectures
which was something very unique back
then. Remember it was 25 years ago.
I would put together a website
where I would uh publish all these
materials and pretty soon it became
super popular.
I opened a discussion forum there. In a
few years I expanded
to the university
uh with all of its other departments and
then to other universities. We ended up
having
tens of thousands of users just as a
student's portal. We had all kinds of
social features there, friends lists,
photo albums, profiles, blogs, all of it
was quite successful.
And after I graduated the university,
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. Petersburg.
And he asked me, are you trying to build
a Russian Facebook?
I said, I'm not sure what's Facebook.
So we met. He
since he graduated an American
university 2 years before that he showed
me Facebook.
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.
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. Getting rid of features is
super important.
>> Simplify both for scaling and for making
it
amendable to uh just growing the user
base where people get it immediately.
>> Yes. Otherwise, it's just too
complicated for the new user. The
existing users will be happy. They'll be
praising you. They will be asking you to
add more stuff to make it even more
complicated.
So, it's easy to
lose track
and get disoriented
if you're only relying on the feedback
of existing users.
So as a result I started the website
called V contact or VK. It means in
touch in Russian initially to solve my
own personal problem. I graduated the
university that same year and I wanted
to be in touch or remain in touch with
my ex-classmates from from the
university and and the other fellow
students.
And of course as a 20-year-old I wanted
to meet other people including
good-looking girls. So I started to
build it from scratch. 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. I was obsessing over every
line of code.
But then how do you start something that
large? Like I didn't have any prior
experience of quitting a project of that
scale which would involve everything.
Before I would reuse some existing
solutions here I wanted to build from
scratch. So I I called my brother. He
was a pos dog student in
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 just to log in, you know.
Yeah. not even to sign up, just to log
in
because you can prepopulate the database
with with credentials and emails and
passwords. Doesn't really matter. 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.
>> Yeah. I mean, that's true.
>> 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 that website, photo
albums, private messages, this guest
book we used to call the wall back on
EKN, I guess, in the early days of
Facebook.
we'd end up building something even more
sophisticated than Facebook at the time
with more features.
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 the
departments and subdivisions.
She did a great job trying to source all
this information online or sometimes
writing emails to universities saying
which departments you have exactly at
this point. we we need to know or
reaching out to the department of
education
both in Russia and then in Ukraine and
and then eventually in Belarus and in
Kazakhstan and other countries where VK
ended up to be the largest and most
popular social network.
So we did a few things that were
quite unique at the time and for the
first
almost a year I was the single employee
of the company. I was the backend
engineer, the front end engineer, the
designer,
I was the customer support officer.
I was the marketing guy as well,
coming up with all the awardings and the
announcements,
coming up with the competitions to
promote VK, which worked quite well.
That was an incredible experience that
gave me knowledge of every aspect of a
social networking platform.
>> Also, understanding of how much a single
person can do. Exactly. 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
take anything but ambitious deadlines
from my team members.
If somebody
gives me, oh, I needed 3 weeks to do
that, I would reply, well, I built the
first version of BK in just two weeks.
Why would you need three weeks?
It seems like something you could
make real in this three days. Three
weeks? What are you going to do the rest
of the three weeks apart from this three
days?
And you know the team knows me and uh
that's why we are able today at Telegram
to move at a very good pace of
innovation. Every month we're pushing
several meaningful features.
I think out competing everybody else in
this industry in terms of what you can
do within a short time frame. So yes,
that experience was invaluable.
As for the stack, I started from PHP and
MySQL, Debian Linux,
but very soon I realized
I need to optimize this. I started using
memcached. Apache servers were not
enough anymore. We had to set up engine
X and my brother was still living in
Germany so he couldn't help me much for
the first year of building BK. Sometimes
I would manage to get through to him
through a call. I would use an old
school phone to call him with wires.
I said what do I do? How do I install
this thing called engineext? I'm not a
Linux guy.
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. But
for the most part, I had to rely on just
myself.
Having him there though helped
when we started to grow fast and started
to scale it
because at first
you realize not one server is not
enough. I need to buy another one,
then another one, and another one. The
database should be in in a different
server. Then you have to split the
database into tables. Then you have to
come up with a way to short the tables
using some criteria that would make
sense and wouldn't break your user
experience. 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. I remember asking him to
come back because you need to help me
with this thing. It's starting to be
really big.
What was worse is that since we became
popular, somebody started to do DOS
attacks on us as it always happens,
>> right?
>> And then we had people that wanted to
buy a share of FK and interestingly
every time we had a negotiation day, the
DOS tax intensified.
So we had to come up with a way to
fight it. I remember having
many sleepless nights trying to figure
it out. So that was your introduction to
all kinds of bad actors. DOS
business
then later you'd find out there's such a
thing called politics and then later
geopolitics.
But this is the initial stages
that it's not just about creating cool
stuff. It's h having to deal with as you
now have to deal with Telegram is seas
of bad actors trying to test the limits
of the system trying to break the
system. Unfortunately, if we didn't have
bad actors and pressure, it would be the
best job ever. You just get to create.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And so uh the help from your
brother like you mentioned engine X and
sharding the tables some of this scaling
issue is algorithmic in nature. It's
almost like theoretical computer
science. So it's not just about like
buying more computers. It's figuring out
how to algorithmically
make everything work extremely fast. So
some of it is mathematics, some of it is
pure engineering but some of it is
mathematics.
>> Yeah. So at that stage I could do the
basic stuff. I could understand how I
implement
scalability into the codebase. How I
short my tables
in the database where I include
memcached instead of direct
requests to the database. That was quite
easy because it was still PHP back in
the day. When my brother got back
from Germany somewhere around 2008,
I asked him, can we make it even more
efficient? Can we make it super fast and
at the same time so that we would
require even fewer servers to maintain
the load? And he said, yes, but know PHP
is not enough. I'll have to rewrite
big part of your
data engines in C and C++.
I said okay let's do that. He invited
a friend of his to help him another
absolute champion in U world's
programming contest
twice in a row and they um
they put together the first customized
data engine which is far more efficient
than just relying on MySQL and memach
because it was First of all, more
specialized, more lowlevel.
>> So they rewrote in CC++
>> a large chunk of it. Like for example,
the search the ad engine because VK had
a targeted ads. They built that. It was
it was very efficient what they did.
Eventually the private messaging part,
the public messages part.
At some point we realized there are very
few websites online that load faster
than VK.
>> Nice.
>> I remember in 2009
I went to Silen Valley and I met Mark
Zuckerberg the first time and some of
the other
core team members of of early Facebook.
remember Facebook was just four or five
years old and and everybody kept asking
me how come even here in Silicon Valley
PK loads faster than Facebook.
Everything seems to
appear instantly on your website. What's
the secret sauce? That was one of the
things that made them very curious. And
that was always important to you to have
very low latency to make sure the thing
loads and cuz that's one of the things
Telegram is really known for. Even on
crappy connections and all that kind of
stuff, it just works extremely fast.
Everything is fast. It's one of the core
technological ideas.
We prioritize speed.
We think that people can notice the
difference even if it's just like 50
millisecond difference. The difference
is subconscious.
It also allows us not just to be faster
and more responsive,
but also more efficient when it comes to
the infrastructure, the expenses.
Because if your code executes faster, it
means you need fewer
computational resources to run it. So
there is no way you can lose in making
things faster. And that's why we have
always been very careful when hiring
people.
I would only hire a person if I'm
ultimately certain it's the best option.
If if you hire somebody who is
maybe a little bit distracted,
unexperienced,
you may end up with inefficiencies in
your code base that results in tens of
millions of dollars of losses.
And think about the responsibility like
if we jump to today from the VK days,
Telegram is used by over a billion
people.
They open it dozens of times every day.
Imagine the app opens with a slight
delay, say half a second delay,
multiplied by dozens of times by a
billion. It gets
centuries, millennia lost for humanity
without any reason
other than just being sloppy. That is so
important to understand and so wise that
it's actually if you're just a little
bit careless as a developer, you can
introduce inefficiencies that are going
to be very difficult to track down
because you don't know that it can be
faster. Like the code doesn't scream at
you saying this could be much faster. So
you have to actually as a craftsman
be very careful when you're writing the
code and always thinking can this be
done much more efficiently? And it can
be tiny things because they all
propagate throughout the code. And so
there's a real cost in having a careless
developer anywhere in the company cuz
they can introduce that inefficiency and
all the other developers won't know.
They'll just assume it kind of has to be
that way. And so
there's a real responsibility for every
single individual developer that's
building any component of an app like
telegram to just always ask you okay can
this be done more efficiently can this
be done more simply and that's like one
of the most beautiful aspects the art
forms of programming
right oh yes because when you manage to
discover
a way to simplify things make them more
efficient.
You feel incredibly happy and proud and
accomplished.
>> And to your point, I can recall a few
instances in my career when
firing an engineer actually resulted to
an increase in productivity. You say you
have two Android engineers building
their app and then
just they just can't make it. They are
not keeping up with the pace of of of of
the feature release schedule. And
you think, I probably have to hire a
third one. But then you notice that one
of them is really weird,
falling behind the schedule, complaining
some of the time, doesn't assume
responsibility,
and you ask, "So, what if I just fire
this person?" and you fire this person
and a few weeks you realize you actually
don't need any and you never needed the
third engineer.
The problem was this guy who created
more issues and more problems than he
solved.
That is so counterintuitive because
you know in developing
tech projects we tend to think that you
just throw more people into something
and then
things get solved miraculously by
themselves just because more people
means more attention from them. No,
>> that's again extremely powerful. the,
you know, Steve Jobs talked about A
players and B players. And there's
something that happens when you have B
players, which is kind of like the folks
you're talking about, introduced into a
team, they can somehow slow everybody
down. They demotivate everybody. It's
very counterintuitive. They basically
part of the work of creating a great
team is removing the B players. It's not
just hiring more in generally speaking.
It's finding the A players quote unquote
and removing the people that are slowing
things down.
>> Oh yes. Because the other thing that
people don't realize is how demotivating
working with the B player is. Everybody
can tell if the other person, the other
engineer they're working with is really
competent. And if if it's very visible,
if the person is not comfortable,
they're asking the wrong questions,
they keep lagging behind.
And at a certain point,
if you're an A player,
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.
And by the way, in some cases, it's not
because the person is lazy.
some cases is just
you know their mental their intellectual
ability is not there.
It's not about experience.
Most often it's about
natural ability and persistence.
In 90% of percent of cases it's just the
inability to focus on one task for an
extended period of time. Not everybody
has this ability. So for people who do
have this ability, it's an insult
to work alongside someone
who is distracted
and cannot go deep
in the projects that they're responsible
for.
What's uh on this small tangent, what's
your hiring process? So you've uh shown
you've talked about how you use
competitions often coding competitions
to hire to find great engineers. Well,
what's your thinking behind that?
>> Well, it's in line with my overall
philosophy. I think competition leads to
progress. If you want to create an ideal
process for selecting the most qualified
people
for certain specific task you have in
mind, what can be better than a
competition?
a coding contest where everybody who
wants to join your company as an
engineer or just wants to get some prize
money or validation
can demonstrate their skills
and then we just select the best. Or if
we are not certain
because there's not enough data
to hire somebody, we just repeat the
contest with another task.
Get more data, get more winners. Then
repeat again. And as some in some point
you realize, oh actually this guy has
competed in 10 of our contest since he
was 16 years old or 14 years old.
Now he's 20 or 21. He won in eight of
these competitions.
He seems to be really good in JavaScript
and Android, Java,
and also C++.
Why not hire this person?
there's uh some consistency there.
And a lot of these people, they have
never worked in a big company before,
which is priceless because in a big
company,
people tend to shift responsibility.
They have this shared responsibility
wherein nobody
fully understands
who can take credit for a project, who
can take blame for a project
inside. It's pretty clear
and this competitions are
the closest experience to
what people will have when working at
Telegram. So for example, we want to
implement certain very tricky animation
and redesign to the profile page of
the telegram as Android version. And the
Android app, it's an open- source app.
Anybody can take its code and play with
it. So as a result, we would uh not just
select the best person and hire this
person. We would also select the best
solution to the problem because we would
not suggest the contestants to solve
trivial problems. It's something that's
valuable. It saves a lot of time for us
in terms of development. And because I
always had this large social media
platforms which I could use to promote
these competitions,
>> right? Somehow both VK and Telegram were
very popular among engineers and
designers, other tech people. I had no
issue to find to promote this contest
and find the right people ever. And
what can be better than for an employee
of your company of somebody who has been
a user of it? If this person has no
prior experience of using Telegram,
their understanding would be very
limited. Why would I even try to hire
somebody from LinkedIn who
worked at Google and other companies
is used to receiving salary for nothing.
Is used to shift responsibility and
being stuck in endless meetings
and have
very limited understanding of what
Telegram stands for.
It's just crazy if you think about it.
>> Yeah. And then but because of that,
you're extremely selective and slow in
hiring. So like the people really have
to earn their spot. And then as a
result, I got a chance to sit in in um
one of the team meetings where people
discuss the different features that are
being developed, the different ideas,
some of which are at the very cutting
edge. And so you get to see be behind
the scenes how it's possible to have
such a fast rate of idea generation. So
you generate the idea, you implement,
you have a prototype and then you
eventually
uh it becomes an actual feature in the
product. And so that's why you have this
kind of half hilarious
half incredible
fact that for many uh as compared to
WhatsApp and Signal, you've led the way
on many of the features. Many of the
features we take for granted now, many
of which we uh know and love, like the
autodelete timer that was seven years
ahead of any other messenger, message
editing,
replies.
These are all like obvious things you
I've even forgotten for some of them
that they even were never part. I mean,
I think autodelete timer is a really
brilliant idea. we implemented is in
2013 in the secret chats. 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 this apps
they initially even copied the exact
timestamps. So for example if we had
like 1 3 and 5 seconds they would also
have 1 three and 5 seconds.
>> Yeah. They tried not to change it
because they were not sure what was the
magic sauce behind the feature. And it
ironically it happens with many of these
things. 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. Then there is a
small snippet in the message itself that
if you tap on it highlights the original
message you're replying to. Seems pretty
obvious but there are certain design
decisions that we were implementing at
the time and we got this vertical line
on the left and all this other small
things that are completely arbitrary
right you can do it in a different way
but somehow the entire industry ended up
coping exactly that solution. So now
whenever you go to WhatsApp, Instagram
direct, Facebook Messenger, Signal, it
doesn't matter. You would see exactly
the same or pretty much similar
experience because nobody really wants
to take the risk and innovate.
If something works,
why not just copy it?
>> Yeah, but we should say that it's done
extremely well. the vertical line and
the highlighting. I mean, all of these
are tiny little strokes of genius,
right? Highlighting the text in a
certain way that from a design
perspective makes it very clear that
this part was written before and thing
under it is your reply. The distinction
between the different formatting of the
text. I mean, there's a listen, I know
how much typography is an art form.
There's a lot of interacting
graphic
artistic elements inside Telegram that
all have to play together extremely
well. Like you pointed out to me, this
thing that just blew my mind, which is
the background gradient of Telegram
shifts. it changes
and it adjusts really nicely to the
bubbles, the chat bubbles. And then
there's like graphic elements on top of
the gradient that all interplay
together. So all of that has to work
really nicely without sacrificing
clarity. Everything's just intuitive.
That's very difficult to create. That is
art. And on top of that, super fast.
That's the hardest part. Like to make it
make it look so that designers love it
is one thing. The real challenge is make
it look the way the designers love it
and make it work on the weakest devices
possible, oldest, cheapest smartphones
you can imagine. So if you take the
moving gradient on the background of
every Telegram chat, this is something
most people don't notice, but they can
feel it.
>> Yeah. Yeah. They they they notice it
subconsciously or something like that.
There is a pleasant feeling. There's a
there is a there's a feeling. There's a
pleasant feeling when you're reading a
chat. And that's where the the design
contributes to that. I think a gradient
really does. I really love that about
Telegram. The gradient, not the
technical thing you described, but the
feeling of it. And then the technical
aspect of creating that feeling is
incredible. I could probably come up
with all kinds of algorithms of
rendering that gradient that's going to
be super inefficient.
And so doing that efficiently is like
>> or efficient but not too beautiful
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. So you can have to introduce
certain randomness there and then you
have the gradient but it's not enough
it's too plain. You want to have certain
pattern as an overlay, but it should be
simple enough not to 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 you want to be vector-based so they
will be infinitely scalable and high
quality.
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 and they're constantly shifting.
I probably look through several thousand
variations of that
because it is such an important decision
to make. It's the default back. Of
course you can change it. Actually, you
can set up your own four colors for
that.
>> You can change it.
>> No way. Really?
>> Yes, you can do it. And you want to rely
on certain deeply hardcoded biological
properties of the human mind, right? So,
which color do you want to use? Is it
going to be blue? Is it going to be
yellow? Is it going to be green? Because
each color has a different meaning in
our brain. And what kind of objects you
want to put there? something from
our childhood, something from nature or
something that can create a different
kind of mood. And this is just one
detail of the app. So there are many
details. 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. How does it happen?
So you want the input field
to slowly morph into the actual message
>> to the message. Yeah.
>> And and you want this to be done
regardless of the contents of the
message because sometimes the width
would be different. Sometimes it would
be containing media or link preview or
other stuff that will change the message
bubble.
So you go through countless different
scenarios and make sure every one of
them works great. even if this message
contains 4,000 characters.
And then you look at all the platforms,
iOS, Android, and all the old devices,
all kinds of outdated
operating systems
and the hardware, and you cross the two
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
tablets as well and our iOS version
works on an iPad which I love a lot. You
have to understand that everything can
be really big. So it can consume a lot
of space on your screen
and then it will trigger
using more computational resources to
render it. So there are a lot of nuances
to it. But as long as you obsess over
every small detail, at least every
detail that really counts, you can get
to a user experience. 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.
>> Yeah. I mean, there are so many really
magical moments. Like for example, the
way a message evaporates
when you delete it. That is a really
pleasant experience.
>> Oh yeah. And boy was it hard to make
particularly in Android. This is this
Thanos snap effect, right? So the
message is broken into 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
gooey graphical
things. It's just art.
It's It's pure art. It's It's like
incredible. So, it's good to hear that
it's been really fought over and thought
through. It's extremely well done.
>> No, you can't pull it off if if if
you're not going deep in this. And then
you don't want to distract people from
their
communication with all this additional
animations. So you want them to be
invisible
in a way.
>> They create the feeling but they don't
create distraction.
>> Yes. And in order to do that it you have
to overcome even more challenges. For
example, you mentioned this deletion
effect. Message evaporates. If you do
the animation, if you throw 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. It feels too
long, too imposing. 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.
And then you imagine what it involves
redrawing the entire screen. So on top
of this very complicated animation,
you have to think about things like
which kind of messages were
there before after
that just adds to complexity.
>> And once again on all kinds of devices,
all kinds of operating systems, all
kinds of tablets, phones, desktop, all
of that. But you know once you
accomplish it, it gives you this immense
sense of pride because nobody is doing
this. Nobody really cares in a way.
Maybe they're right not to care.
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
deleting messages.
What kind of experience they get? Is
this an experience that maybe even
subconsciously inspires them
and makes their heart sing even a little
bit?
fills them with joy, lightens up their
mood even a little bit by 0.001%.
or is it something that is just basic
and I think if we can
bring some value in people's lives
even through this subtle details
we have to definitely invest our time in
it and some joy not just sort of value
like productivity but joy I think Steve
Jobs Johnny I have talked about this
they will put so much love and effort in
the design of everything including
things that weren't visible in the
initial PC personal computers because
they believe that you somehow through
osmosis
the users will be able to feel the love
that the designers put into the thing
and you're absolutely right I mean I
it's not about deleting messages like I
feel a little inkling of joy when I see
that evaporation animation it's just
nice
I'm happier because of And like so I
feel that effort and I think you know
billion users
feel that
>> people like when other people care.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it
is. And of course there's the more sexy
things like all the emojis and the
stickers, the gifts. Many of those are
just their little like art pieces.
That's again an intersection of art and
technology because you look at the
stickers which Telegram launched way
before most of these other apps.
>> Three years and eight months ahead
>> ahead of WhatsApp. Yes. But the stickers
that WhatsApp ended up launching three
years and eight months after were not
the first version were not was not
really good because they just did
regular GIFs or webm videos
which were not based on vector graphics.
What we did is vector animations. Each
of these stickers is only several
kilobytes sometimes maybe maximum 20 30
kilobytes in size but it says 180
frames. We were able to run them at 60
frames per second on all devices 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 and it starts moving
instantly. And then of course, it's not
just engineering. 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. Where do you
find these people? Again, we did
competitions,
but was not easy to assemble a team of
artists slash artists, artist/gineers. I
would say that are able to do something
like this. This is a unique form of art
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. I don't think
anybody did that. I think to 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. It's
probably unnecessary and crazy, but we
think somewhere in this intersection of
art and engineering, true quality is
created. 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 with
their birthdays and other holidays
and that was received extremely well.
Yeah, they can hold value. They can
increase in value. You can trade them
for that in that aspect. But to me,
still the
the the vector graphics and it's not
just simple graphics. It's incredibly
intricate graphics. So the vector makes
it very efficient, but it also allows
you to create maybe incentivizes the
artist,
enables them, incentivizes them to
create super detailed, intricate
elements and then the final result like
you would think it wouldn't matter but
the final result has like a lot of stuff
going on and it's and it allows you to
scale on arbitrary devices and now now
it's like this little
you know like usually GIFs from like
back in the day and still in meme form
or low resolution
and so that desens usually people don't
put details and intricate art into it
but here with vector graphics it's like
like a million anything's going on. And
it allows you to play with different
animations like you showed me this thing
where you send and you hold for a while
on the send button. And so you can share
with the person you send a message to
this animation that you've encoded. Like
there's a bunch of stuff going on when
they read the message. Yes, we have a
lot of features like that when we use
this art to allow people to express
themselves.
And most people don't even know about
these features. I didn't know about it.
That was cool. That was cool.
>> The other application of the same
technology is reactions on Telegram
because we made it a goal
to
make sure that people feel joy when they
just send you a like.
Something so trivial is just adding a
like to a message should be an action
that you want to perform again and again
and again.
>> So another feature is uh on the more
serious side anti- encryption. So you
led the industry in that it was launched
one year and 3 months ahead. Can you
speak to why you decided to add end
toend encryption? How you developed the
encryption algorithm in the beginning?
What was your thinking behind that?
So at 2013 when we were launching
telegram
we were aware of the
serious issue with privacy
that Edward Snowden made very clear
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 and we understood very clearly
that a bunch of people who were born in
Russia don't necessarily inspire trust.
So that's why we made Telegram open
source. So all our apps have been
open available on GitHub since 2013
and then we added enter encryption in
our secret chats which
WhatsApp copied a few years after one
year and 3 months ahead they just
started to test it. They rolled it out I
think 2016 which is
three years after us. And the only
reason I think the rest of the industry
had to do it is because
we set the standard.
It was incredibly important back in the
day and at the same time we realized
certain limitations of end to
encryption.
So within that
design
that architecture you can't support
very large chat communities with
consistent persistent chat histories.
You can't support
huge one many channels. You'd have
issues with maintaining
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 see
soil issues and we ended ended up having
this sort of
hybrid
experience where depending on your use
case and your requirements you can
choose the level of
encryption that we want to have. So
that's why you chose to go opt in for
end to end encryption. So the trade-off
there that you're describing is between
for people who really care about
specific messages uh extreme privacy on
those messages
and uh usability like being able to sync
across multiple devices, having groups
that are 200,000 people. So all those
features that uh quality of life
features, there's a trade-off between
those and end time encryption. So you
lean towards uh letting users sort of
enable end to end encryption for cases
when they want to be super secure.
>> Yes. And secret chats are not just end
to end encrypted. You know there are
certain limitations that are both their
feature and the bug. 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. So it became very clear to us
that there are different needs here and
if you try to combine both in one type
of chat you will end up losing a lot of
utility. You know we at Telegram we
don't use any
collaboration tool for teamwork. We use
telegram to build telegram. So we felt
instantly when we were you trying to
switch to say secret chats to
share large documents and uh try to get
work done. It was just not
adapted for it. At the same time if you
were really paranoid you think you I
don't want to be screenshotted. I I
don't want to have any leaks.
I don't even trust Telegram. I I only
trust code.
Secret chess are the best option. I
believe it is the most secure means of
communication today. And we should say
that there's a lot of other aspect to
this that are important. For example,
Telegram is the only app that has open-
source reproducible builds for both
Android and iOS. Why is this important?
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.
For that you need to make your apps
open source for any researchers to have
a look at it. So, Telegram has been open
source since 2013.
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.
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
and for that you need reproducible
builds.
As you said, is the only popular
messaging app that does that. We allow
people to make sure both on Android and
iOS that the source code of Telegram on
GitHub and the app you're actually using
is the same app. I think it's incredibly
important not just to gain people's
trust but just to stay transparent and
open about it. When I make this claim
that Telegram's secret chats are the
most secure
way of communicating, I really mean it
because I haven't seen
any fact contradicting this claim. Uh at
least among the popular messaging app
you say WhatsApp, uh Signal, iMessage,
none of them have reproducible bills on
both iOS and Android.
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. At
least
from what I know about our competitors,
I don't think they went through the same
process. So we should say that the
entirety of the software stack in
Telegram is done from scratch internally
to Telegram. So we're talking about not
just the encryption but everything
running on the servers.
So the servers are built out, the
hardware and the software are all done
internally, which is one of the ways you
reduce the attack surface on the entire
stack that handles the messages. It does
make it more secure
because
if Snowden's relations taught us
anything is that very often
open-source tools, modules, libraries
that are used by everybody
ended up having certain flaws and
security issues
that make yourself vulnerable. It's also
a way
to make sure you're doing things the
most efficient way possible.
But it's extremely difficult to do that.
You really have to have exceptional
talent in your team to achieve this
level of thoroughess. to go to a low
level of coding that allows you to
recreate from scratch database engines,
web servers, entire programming
languages
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.
>> Yeah. So removing uh minimizing the
reliance on open source libraries is
extremely difficult as most most
companies they they rely on open source
libraries.
>> Well I wouldn't say we completely
independent from that. We use Linux on
the back end. There's no way of avoiding
it for us at the moment but for the most
part we are much more self-reliant
than most other apps.
>> Uh you mentioned Edward Snowden a long
time ago. you wanted to work together
with him uh perhaps to share expertise
to understand uh the full realm of this
um of what it takes to achieve cyber
security. Uh what do you make of his
case? What lessons do you learn from
what he has uncovered and maybe even
broadly what impact has his work had on
the world do you think? Well, the main
lesson is not everything what it seems.
that you would
discover, and this is something that 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.
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 and that was very
valuable for the world to understand.
I guess it also can be a lesson
demonstrating that we humans don't get
their balance right. So 9/11
created
a situation when the government had to
respond
and it responded but it overreacted. 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. You have this
situation when the cure is worse than
the disease.
I think it was incredibly brave to do
what Edward did.
I didn't get to work with him. Whoever
see him in person or we keep in touch.
We sometimes communicate
but we are not close. I still I think
what he did is laudable.
I hope someday we meet. You yourself
have faced
the full force of uh various
governments, intelligence agencies.
Is there any intelligence agency you're
afraid of? Any government you're afraid
of?
I think they're all equally should be
equally afraid of or equally not afraid
of in a way. It's it's not that this
intelligence service can kill you and
the other can't kill you.
>> They all can kill you. I guess they all
can kill me one way or the other,
but it's a matter of whether I'm afraid
of death.
>> This goes back to the beginning of our
conversation, I think, multiple times.
So, you're in general fearless in the
face of the pressure.
>> That would be a very bold statement, but
I proved to be quite stress resilient.
And it's not that you don't have fear.
You can have fear, but you overcome this
fear.
I don't think there is anything
at this point that can happen to change
the way I am.
>> So, you went through a lot in uh from
2011 to 2014, government pressure that
you refused to give into that led you to
create Telegram and let go of VK.
And then in 2018,
Russia and Iran decided to ban telegram.
That was another example of pressure.
Can you take me through that saga in
2018?
And so in 2018, Telegram started to
become popular. I think we had something
like
200 million users.
And it increasingly became popular in
places like Iran and Russia
and other countries where sometimes
people
have something to hide from the
government.
In Iran, people used telegram to protest
against the government.
They had these huge channels
that would they would use to organize
the protests
and eventually the government couldn't
keep up.
They decided to ban
people would still keep using it though
using VPNs.
It didn't help. The government
invested a lot in coming up with their
own messaging app. They had several
teams competing
for the title of the national Iranian
messaging app. All the apps failed.
People still prefer Telegram.
Interesting. Iran banned Telegram, but
WhatsApp wasn't banned.
or at least they unbanned WhatsApp soon
after.
At the same time,
starting in mid 2017 or late 2017,
Russia demanded that Telegram hands them
the encryption keys. 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.
And we told them it's impossible.
If you have to ban us, ban us. And this
is what they ended up doing
in spring 2018.
And that was quite fun because
they were trying to block our IP
addresses, but we were prepared for
that.
And we came up this technology that
allowed us to rotate IP addresses,
replacing them with new ones every time
the sensor blocks our existing
addresses.
And then it was completely automated. We
had
millions of IP addresses. We would be
burning through them.
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.
We ended up spending I think millions of
dollars on that
and as a result
the sensor got crazy there. they would
ban IP addresses and largest subnets of
IP addresses and
huge subnets which resulted in a weird
situation where parts of the country's
infrastructure started to go down like
people were trying to pay for groceries
and the supermarkets and
nothing would work because the Russian
sensor blocked too many IP addresses and
some of the subnets were used to host
other unrelated services.
Even some Russian social networks and
media got affected, banks.
So, they had to
start being more selective in how they
combat
our anti-ensorship tools.
The biggest resistance we got at the
time was from Apple.
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.
We said it's not possible.
They said we will allow you to push your
update for telegram worldwide except for
Russia.
We didn't want to do that. I almost lost
help. You know, at some point I said,
you know, maybe
this is the only way. Maybe we should
leave the Russian market. Stop allowing
users from Russia to download the app
from the app store, which should mean
it's over.
We helped organize certain protests in
defense of telegram and privacy and
freedom of speech in 2018 in Moscow.
There was hilarious people flying paper
airplanes. I saw that
and uh at some point I decided I have to
make a statement. I have to say that
Apple sided with the sensor
that we are trying to do the right thing
here but without Apple we can't do much
because people can't download your app
anymore.
I published it in my channel
and then New York Times picked it up
with the picture of the protesters
flying paper airplanes.
Apple was criticized in that story and I
thought, well,
Apple should probably
come back to the right side of history
here.
And 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
and it made
the old versions of Telegram obsolete.
some features that used to work stopped
working and users all over the world
started to suffer. Like people that had
nothing to do with Russia from other
parts of the world experienced it
experienced issues with with Telegram.
So it was really serious. And I said to
my team, you know what? If by 6:00 p.m.
today, I think it was a Friday,
nothing changes and Apple doesn't allow
us to
push the version of Telegram through.
Let's just forget about the Russian
market. Let's keep going because the
rest of the world is more important.
It's sad, but what can we do?
>> Which, by the way, removes all the
people that want to protest, all the
people that want to talk in Russia. It
removes their ability to have a voice in
the most popular messaging app in that
part of the world.
>> Yes. 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.
Your update is approved." And we managed
to
keep playing
this hideand-seek game with the sensor,
bypassing censorship through digital
resistance. 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. uh
and in addition it was
not clear whether we wouldn't be in
violation of the sanctions regime.
So we did something else. We created a
an economic incentive for
people who would set up proxy servers
for telegram.
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
placed there by the system
administrator, the owner of the proxy.
And this is how you can monetize your
proxy. So it created this
market
which
resulted in Iranians fixing their own
problem
and as a result we kept millions or
maybe tens of millions of Iranian users.
Up until this day, I think the telegram
is still banned in Iran today, but we
probably have
something like 50 million people relying
on Telegram from that country.
>> So, the people find a way around.
>> People find a way around.
>> That's ingenious. That's really great to
hear.
I have to ask you about this. After
having spent many days with you, I
learned it's something that you've never
talked about.
at the time have not talked about to
this day
that there was an assassination attempt
on you using what appears to be
poisoning in 2018.
I think to me it showed the seriousness
of this fight to uphold the freedom of
speech for everyone
for all people of art that you're uh
doing.
I have to say it would mean a lot to me
if you tell me this story.
>> Well, this is something I never talked
about publicly because I didn't want
people to freak out,
particularly at the time. It was I think
spring 2018.
We were trying to raise funds for Dawn,
a blockchain project, working with all
kinds of
VCs and investors.
In the meantime,
we had a couple of countries trying to
ban Telegram. So, it wasn't exactly the
best moment for me to start sharing
anything related to my personal health.
But that was something that
it's hard to forget
that you know I never fall ill. I have I
believe I have perfect health.
I very rarely have headaches
or bad cough.
I don't take pills because I don't have
to take pills.
And that was the only instant in my life
when I think I
I was dying.
I came back home, opened the door of my
townhouse, the place I rented, had this
weird neighbor, and he left something
for me there around
the door.
And one hour after when I was already in
my bed, so I was living alone,
I felt very bad.
I felt
pain all over my body.
I tried to get up and
go to the bathroom.
But while I was going there, I felt that
functions of my body started to switch
off. First the eyesight, then hearing.
Then I had difficulty breathing.
Everything accompanied by
very acute pain.
Heart, stomach
or blood vessels.
It was It's a difficult thing to
explain,
but one thing I was certain about is
Yeah. This is it.
>> You thought you were going to die?
>> Yeah, this is it. because I couldn't
breathe. I couldn't see anything. It was
very painful. I think it's over.
I thought, well, I have I had had a good
life. I managed to accomplish a
accomplish a few things.
And then I collapsed on the floor, but I
don't remember it
because the pain covered everything.
I found myself
on the floor the next day was already
bright
and I couldn't stand up. I was super
weak.
I looked at my
arms
at my body.
Blood vessels were broken all over my
body. Something like this never happened
to me. I couldn't walk for two weeks
after.
I stayed at my place
and I decided not to tell most of my
team about it because again I don't want
that I didn't want them to worry
but it was tough. That was tough.
Did that make you
afraid
of the road you're walking?
meaning all the governments, all the
intelligence agencies, all the people.
Like we mentioned, it's like you're
playing a video game. You started with
VK where you're just trying to build the
thing that scales and all of a sudden
you find out there's DDoS attacks
attacking the
uh the security the integrity of the
infrastructure and then you realize
there's politics and then you realize
there's geopolitics
and all of these forces are interested
in
uh controlling channels of communication
and you're just
a curious guy who created a platform for
everybody on the earth to talk and all a
sudden you realize
there's a lot of people attacking you.
How did that change your view? That make
you more scared of the world?
Interestingly, not at all. If anything,
I felt even more free after that. It
wasn't the first time I thought I was
going to die.
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.
But
you know after you after you survive
something like this you feel like you're
living on bonus time. So in a way you
died a long time ago
and every
new day you get is a gift as a bonus.
>> Yes. And the first time you're referring
to is that would that have to do with
the with the complexity that was
happening with the pressure from the
government on VK and then you had to
figure out the increasing pressure and
you had to figure out what to do and
they you understood that you're losing
control of VK that that moment.
>> The first of this instances was in
December 2011. December 2011, you had
this huge protest on the streets of
Moscow.
They didn't trust in the integrity of
the election results to the state dumma
in Russia. And remember 2011, I still
lived in Russia
running VK. There was no telegram.
So the government demanded that we take
down
the opposition groups of Navali from VK
that had
hundreds of thousands of members
and that were used to organize this
protest
and I very publicly refused to do that.
I just
decided it's not the right thing to do.
people have the right to assemble. And I
mocked the prosecutor who handed me that
demand. I put out a scan of it
and next to it
a photo of a dog in a hoodie with its
tongue out and I said, "This is my
official response to the prosecutor's
requests to ban the position groups."
That was very funny at the moment.
But then I had armed policemen trying to
get into my
apartment
and I thought about many things at that
moment.
I asked myself
did I make the right choice
and I came to the conclusion that I made
the right choice. And I asked myself,
what would be the next thing
that would logically follow from this?
And I realized,
they're probably going to put me in
prison.
So, what am I going to do about it? I
asked myself.
And I told myself, I'm going to starve
myself to self to death. It's it's
something that probably many men have.
They're ready to die for other people or
certain principles they strongly believe
in. I'm not alone here.
I guess Edward Snowden was ready to die
as well or some other people like
Assange.
Also, at that moment, I realized there's
no way to communicate securely. I need
to tell my brother what's going on.
They're probably going after him. How do
I tell him
without betraying him?
Because in 2011,
remember WhatsApp was already there. I
think they launched it in 2009,
but it had zero encryption.
All messages were plain text in transit,
meaning that even your system
administrator, let alone your carrier,
had access to your messages.
It was only after telegram started this
push for encryption that these other
apps suddenly
remembered that privacy was in their DNA
as founders famously stated but it must
have been a dormant gene in 2011.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. In 2011, there was no way
to send a message in secure way.
And I also told myself, if I'm going to
survive this, I'm definitely launching a
secure messaging app. Somehow, it ended
up not being too bad. I was summoned to
the prosecutor,
answered some silly questions,
fewer questions that I had to answer.
more recently in the French
investigation case,
but it was the beginning of the end. It
was clear that
there's no way I'm going to be allowed
to run VK the way I wanted it to run.
That was the moment I
packed my backpack
and just started to wait
just
they moved to hotel
and realized any day I can leave the
country. I kept
running VK.
I started to design Telegram
and assembling the team,
but I knew my days in Russia were
numbered. Well, first I really have to
say for myself from I think millions,
maybe hundreds of millions, maybe the
entirety of Earth, thank you for putting
your life on the line in those cases. I
think freedom of speech is fundamental
to the flourishing of humanity. So, um,
and it depends on people
willing to put everything on the line
for their principles. So, thank you.
Quick pause. I need a bathroom break.
All right, we're back. And, uh, once
again, we had a super long day and the
fact that you would spend many hours
with me. Thank you for powering through.
We got this. cuz it's already late at
night.
>> Thanks for doing this.
>> Okay, so um
there is increasing indication I think
from uh things I've seen online that
Russia is considering banning telegram.
First of all, do you think this might
happen? And what effect do you think
this might have on humanity? And in
general, what do you think about this?
>> It can definitely happen. As you said,
there are certain indications. There
have been certain test attempts to
partially ban it. Telegram is no longer
accessible in parts of Russia such as
Dagistan.
And it will be incredibly sad if
Russia restores its attempts to ban
Telegram because currently
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. If you think
about
media outlets such as BBC or any other
nonRussian source of of information,
they're only accessible in Russia
through Telegram in the form of Telegram
channels. Their websites are banned.
some other social media sites are banned
and as you said like there are
indications that Russia is
planning to migrate
users from existing messaging apps such
as WhatsApp and Telegram to their own
homegrown tool
which would of course be fully
transparent to the government and
wouldn't allow voices independent from
the government to express themselves.
It's certainly an alarming trend.
We see this attempts in countries that
are not famous for
protecting freedom of speech, but also
increasingly in countries that
have been known to protect freedoms.
And this creates this
vicious circle
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
restrictions to freedom of speech which
then in turn be used
by authoritarian regimes
and they would say in places like China
or Iran
that they're not doing anything
different.
It's a norm now
through strict voices
that
go don't 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 this recent
innovations that Telegram implements.
They are the early adopters.
I'd say them and also the Americans,
perhaps other people from Eastern Europe
like Ukrainians
and Southeast Asians. They're among the
first people to start using any new
edition that we launch.
They're incredibly hungry for
innovation. So, all that said, there's
uh
as part of the propaganda and in
general, there's attacks on you all over
the place. There's misinformation.
I've read a bunch of things that are I
think in a systematic way,
lying about you, lying about Telegram,
uh from all angles. Why do you get
attacked so much by everybody? Well,
protecting freedom of speech
is not a way to make it over 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. And then
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 or Maui
China, they'd always use the same trick.
They'd say, "We need to limit your
freedom of speech because
these people who are masquerading as a
position are actually
the agents of this other country. that
wants to take over. That's why dear
citizens forget about their freedoms.
And now increasingly you see similar
attempts in uh free countries.
the initial instinct from say President
Mcron's team when they're confronted
with some footage,
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.
And then when they are confronted with
more information, they have to refine
the narrative.
So when
you find yourself in a situation that
you're running this platform
like Telegram and then you protect the
freedom to express
of
ideas that don't go in line with the
mainstream narrative,
you
often find yourself
in this crossfire
when the forces in power will say that
you must be working with some foreign
government that they don't like.
Inevitably, they would say that, "Oh, if
you're protecting these voices, it's not
right." 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. They praise you for
that. But then
they have this bipolar attitude
when you do the same in their own
country and they say, "No, no, no, no,
no. We love you for protection, freedom
of speech, but not here. Not in my
backyard. We don't need it here. We're
all right. We have free press."
And then you will find yourself in this
weird spot that Ukrainians say you work
for the Russians. The Russians say you
work for the Ukrainians.
And all this schizophrenia is something
that we had to deal with for some time
because it's it's a very easy way to
attack you. At some point you don't
understand where it is coming from
because is it our competitors? And we
must give credit to our competitors if
it's their invention to launch these
kind of rumors because
to a certain point they must have
realized they can't compete
technologically
on the product side. So they must do
something like this. 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. And through
all of this, we should say over and over
that you are simply preserving the
freedom of speech for all people of
Earth. No matter what they believe,
as long as they don't call for violence
and as long as they're not doing some of
the criminal activity that we discussed,
including terrorist organizing, but
other than that, it doesn't matter what
they believe, leftwing or right-wing,
you're just preserving their freedom of
speech. You think people of Ukraine,
people of Russia and people of Iran,
people of all over the world understand
that despite the propaganda against you?
I think people are smart.
Every time I meet somebody from one of
these countries you mentioned in real
life, people recognize me in the street,
say here in Dubai,
they come over,
they seem incredibly grateful and
understanding.
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 Tilgrim exists is
because the way they can
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. Because there's no such thing
as an unbiased source of information.
When the war
in Ukraine started in 2022,
I instantly realized Telegram is going
to be used to spread propaganda by both
sides.
And I didn't want Telegram to be used as
a tool for war. 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.
Maybe we shouldn't have channels in
these two countries.
And then interestingly people from both
countries
revolted against this.
They told me both of people in Ukraine
and in Russia that I don't get to
babysit them and decide for them
what sources of information that they
have to be granted access to. They
grown-ups that can make this decisions
for themselves.
They understand that there is a lot of
propaganda.
They learn to see through this
propaganda. They learned to be able to
tell truth from lie. And in this time of
war, it was particularly valuable for
them
to receive as much information as
possible because their relatives, their
friends
who are getting affected and are still
getting affected,
they want to understand what was going
on.
At that moment, I realized people are
smart. People get it.
People can see through it. 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.
>> They hunger to have a voice.
>> They need a voice and they need a place
to share their opinion securely.
I have to ask on the question of
leadership. Um, in uh the Le Point
interview, the journalist said that uh
you're often compared to Elon Musk
and you highlighted some interesting
nuances around that that you're quite
different that uh Elon runs several
companies at once while you only run one
and Elon can lean more on the emotional
side while you deliberate and think
deeply before acting. Uh can you expand
on this? Also, there's an interesting
point that he made that everybody's
weakness is also a strength. Everybody's
strength is also a weakness. There's a
dual nature to all our characteristics.
So,
on the topic of Elon,
what have you learned from his style of
leadership? What do you respect about
him?
First of all,
I don't think there is such thing as
a negative personal trait. In most
cases, our bad traits and our good
traits are the same trait or at least
have the same source. 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. Like in depending on
circumstances,
you would see exactly the same
personality trait.
And it will be either a good thing or a
bad thing
because humanity is perfect as a whole.
And each of us is different for a
reason. We have evolved to be different
to complement each other's abilities so
that together we're invincible.
And even if you take a person
as complicated as Ian,
I believe that certain traits that Elen
demonstrates
that people criticize about him
are also the sources of his strength.
For example, his emotionality
is derived from the fact that he cares
about issues deeply.
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. He also seems to be
able to extract motivation
from all this wars and personal
conflicts
which is again not something to be
underestimated.
At a certain point in a life of a
successful entrepreneur,
the question of motivation starts to be
the primary question. 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?
And if starting
a war on X, debating certain issues
or becoming personal with other CEOs,
criticizing them. If these activities
help Elen
to innovate
and start new projects,
he should be doing more of it. There's
nothing wrong in uh
being nonaggreeable.
Actually, it's one of the main traits of
a successful entrepreneur,
not agreeing with things.
And every time somebody like Elon, but
there is no somebody like Elen, it's
just Elon. 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. Well, some people think he is, but
he manages to still demonstrate
success
in all or most of his endeavors.
So again, you can criticize Elen for
being emotional, but would he be the
same person without this? I doubt that.
and the incredible teams he's motivated
too. There's an element of that which
you've spoken about the team at
Telegram. You know,
assembling a team of a players as we've
talked about is a skill in itself and
that's also a big part of the uh the
leaders that we've discussed. It's like
what judged in part by the team you
assemble.
>> Yes. And one of the necessary character
features to enable that is to be ready
to be unpleasant.
You have to be ready to insult some
people if their work is inferior. You
have to be ready to fire them without
remorse.
So in order to be an efficient, a great
entrepreneur and enrich the world of
innovations,
you have to do unpleasant things. Most
people will shy away from it. And
in a certain sense, entrepreneurs
sacrifice their peace of mind
in order to
contribute to the world around them. and
Elen is a great example of that.
>> I have to ask you about the big picture
of Telegram.
Uh
we've already talked about the fact that
you own 100% of it and there's a lot of
on the business side of it. The the
business structure of Telegram is
fascinating.
Um you've invested
hundred maybe hundreds of millions of
dollars of your own money. Uh as far as
I know, you take a salary of what? One
dollar.
>> One dear. It's one third of that
one/ird of a dollar
and uh in 2024 was the first time
telegram was profitable. So one of the
interesting questions is here that we
could talk for many hours about but I'd
love to get a high view picture. So
you've you've left what I understand
what I think is a huge amount of money
on the table by sticking to your
principles. for example, not doing
advertisement that's based on user
private data, which basically every
social media company does. So the only
advertisement that Telegram does is
based on channels and groups based on
the topic, not the private data of the
individuals. And the other thing is
which is also gangster and incredible is
you don't do a newsfeed
which is the most addictive and
engagement inducing aspect of social
media which feeds the very kind of
uh addictive downside of the internet.
the distraction, the engagement, drama,
farming
aspect that we've talked about in the
very beginning that you tried to resist
uh that you think is damaging the human
mind at scale. So anyway, that that's
just speaking to the fact that you're
leaving a lot of money on the table. So
how the hell were you able to be
profitable? What are the ways the
Telegram makes money? 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
because money has never been the primary
goal. It's not for me. When I sold
the remaining share of my first company
and I had to do it below market price
because
I didn't leave Russia completely without
any pressure. As you know
I reinvested the vast majority of
everything
in telegram.
Telegram is an operation that is losing
money for me personally. I never I
didn't extract more from Telegram than I
invested in it. I never sold a single
share.
But I also didn't want to sell to them.
So how do you reach a point when you're
profitable without sacrificing your
values? One of the ideas we explored was
a subscription model but only for
certain additional features. 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 four or$5 a month.
It was quite unprecedented at the time.
It did wasn't considered a viable option
for messaging apps to do that. We
launched the premium subscriptions for
Telegram in
and now we have over 15 million paid
subscribers.
This is
some very significant recurring revenue.
So we would um
receive
more than half a billion dollars from
premium subscriptions alone this year
and it's growing fast.
For that we had to innovate a lot. We
included over 50 different features
into the premium package.
And then how do you make an app that is
already more powerful than any other
other messaging app on the market
even more useful so that people would be
ready to pay for this extra? That wasn't
easy. That took a lot of effort. And
you're constantly adding features.
>> We constantly adding features. It's
actually fun to watch just the rate of
adding and some of them are subtle like
the updates, the in improvements,
expansions of poles for example.
>> Yeah. So you keep improving the existing
features and adding new ones and every
time when you add a new feature, you
don't want to clutter the app.
>> So in a way they're not in your way.
They're invisible.
>> That's not an easy thing to do. And most
of the features maybe are not even known
to the majority of our users, but when
you need them, they're there. So,
premium is one source of our revenue. We
also have ads, but they're context
based, not targeted. Of course, we leave
probably
80% of value
on the table because we are not ready to
engage in all this practices exporting
personal data. Just to be clear,
targeted ads is what most social media
companies, most tech companies that do
any kinds of advertisement do. And
that's the kind of advertisement that
uses
personal data from users. Just to
clarify.
>> And when you said 80%, that's a lot of
money. Of course, because we would never
use, for example, your personal
messaging data or your contact data or
your metadata or your activity data to
target ads.
It's
sad that it became synonymous with the
internet industry,
this kind of exploitation. But we are
happy with the fact that we managed to
make Telegram profitable. Despite that,
we're also experimenting a lot with
blockchain based technologies.
We're the first app to allow people to
directly own their username and their
digital identities using smart contracts
and NFTts,
removing Telegram from the picture. So
for example, Telegram cannot confiscate
your username from you. It's impossible.
We do a lot of things related to the
ecosystem of Celgroom. We have a
thriving mini app platform. Millions of
mini app developers launching their own
bots and applications.
So a lot of people are making millions
of dollars on the Telegram platform.
Yes, we enable them to receive
payments from the users through
inapp 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 standalone or they're
part of their overall experience.
And by providing this payment option,
we're able to extract
a commission
from these transactions, but it's a very
low commission. Presently, it's 5%.
So, we're not greedy here. We want
people to
succeed in building these tools for our
users. We understand that many apps
bring users.
The more users we have, the more
successful and relevant Telegram
becomes. We need third party developers.
I think at this point, Telegram gives
developers by far the most powerful
tools to create. Plus, there's a bot API
and I mean, you have to tell me about
the TON blockchain and the crypto
ecosystem available through Telegram.
So, what is TON aka the open network
blockchain?
TON is a blockchain technology that we
initially developed in 2018 and 2019 and
we started to develop it because we
needed a blockchain platform to be
integrated deeply into Telegram because
we believe in blockchain. We think it's
one of the technologies that enabled
freedom. 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. They
would just become congested.
And I asked my brother, can we create a
blockchain platform that would be
inherently scalable so that no matter
how many users or transactions there
are, it would split into smaller pieces,
which we call short chains, and would
still process all transactions.
And he thought for a few days and said,
"Yes, it's it's possible, but it's not
easy." And we started building it. We
ended up succeeding in developing that
technology, but we couldn't release it
because
the SEC, the Securities and Exchanges
Commission in the United States was
unhappy with the way
the fund raise for Dawn was conducted.
So we had to abandon the project and
the open source community took over.
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.
And so this project
got eventually launched
without our direct involvement
and it's thriving now because everything
we do like I said this blockchainbased
tokenized
usernames
telegram accounts are all based on dawn
on it and it smart contracts.
It's the only way for third party
developers and creators
to withdraw the funds that they earn
through our revenue sharing programs.
For example, with channel owners, we do
a 50/50 split of ad revenues.
It's also the only way to transact on
Telegram. For example, if you want to
buy ads on Telegram, you you should use
Don
all the new things we launch. For
example, let's say
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 don
incredibly
fast growing in space. We only launched
them half a year ago
and now as a result of this Telegram
gifts, Dawn has become
I think the largest of the second
largest
blockchain
in terms of NF daily NFT trading
volumes. So yeah, like you mentioned, it
is a a layer 1 technology as opposed to
being built on top of Ethereum or
Bitcoin and it's able to achieve the
scale and the speed of transactions
that's needed for something like
Telegram. And like you also mentioned
the gifts you recently launched
uh some Snoop Dog gifts. Is there going
to be some other celebrities in the
pipeline? Yeah, I'm a big fan of Snoop
and that's why when they reach out
suggest to do something together said
let's launch up Snoop related gifts and
it was really fun. We managed to sell 12
million worth of gifts within 30
minutes.
>> 30 minutes. Well, there you go. I even
got a few. But yeah, after this we have
many requests from many really
high-profile influencers
that in a way are lining up. So, from my
perspective as a fan, it's just
interesting to see what kind of art you
create for any kind of celebrities,
athletes, musicians, cuz like the Snoop
uh the Snoop Gifts are all just like
going back to our previous conversation,
just beautiful pieces of art that like
in encapsulate certain memes,
certain aspects of Snoop that everybody
knows, these cultural icons that he
represents. It's cool. That's just and
the detail, the incredible detail of the
art of the individual gifts is just
incredible. And each of of these gifts
is scalable
because it's vector based.
It references certain points in Snoop's
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. It's something that we
reinvented because we didn't like the
old school NFTts. First of all, they
were not relevant socially because okay,
you have an NFT
where do you demonstrate it in a
telegram a telegram gift is there next
to your name. It's part of your digital
identity on Telegram and then you can
create collections of gifts and show it
off on your profile page.
But it also the other thing that we
wanted to reinvent is the aesthetic part
of it. Most NFTs are just ugly
and they are not based on any
sophisticated technology.
So what we did with Snoop's gifts,
I think represents
an example of
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. I'm quite
proud of it. I think it's a new trend, a
new phenomenon. It's only half a year
old. So, let's see where it goes. We're
going to select our next
influencer
or artist to be part of it. Hey, listen.
I'm really proud. I got a Snoop Gift
next to my name, and I figured out that
you can add even more by pinning them.
It's like a cool little art icon.
>> We We didn't expect it, by the way. We
just had a lot of fun launching these
things. And then we realized that one of
the first collections we should, we sold
each piece at something like
$5.
And then
the minimum price of any items in these
collections currently is something like
$10,000
and it keeps going up.
So I was quite surprised with the
reception. I realized you know 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 your users
not exploit them. People love this
gifts. People love the fact that they
can congratulate a person close to them
with something valuable. and at the same
time something beautiful. Also, some
people make a business out of it, which
is funny. They resell these gifts. We
recently met a guy who earned several
million dollars
just from buying and selling gifts.
>> It's a real market.
>> It's a real market. It's just something
that he did in a few months. And last
year when we launched
many new features for the mini apps on
Telegram and uh the payments options for
them and the other monetization options,
the same guy earned $12 million
from mini apps and I know several people
just anecdotally I I earned $10 million
earned $3 million just in a matter of
months single-handedly sometimes
they would have a team of two, three
people. So whenever I hear stories from
people who
were able to build businesses on top of
Telegram, this makes me incredibly
proud. And many apps include games, they
include um like tools, services of any
kind. It's an app within the ecosystem
of Telegram. Let me ask about crypto in
general. So, you've you've been an early
supporter of um cryptocurrencies,
Bitcoin.
You've uh bought in into Bitcoin early
on. You kept buying. Um maybe you could
speak to the reasoning why you kept
buying Bitcoin.
Uh do you think Bitcoin will go to a
million dollars? Do you think it'll keep
increasing? And Bitcoin and all the
other cryptocurrencies?
I was a big believer in bitcoins since
more or less the start of it. I got to
buy my first few thousand of bitcoin in
and I didn't care much. I think I bought
at the local maximum. It's something
like $700 per bitcoin and they just
threw a couple of millions there.
A lot of people after Bitcoin later next
year went down somewhere close to 300
started to express
their
sympathy to me. They say, "Oh, you're a
poor fellow. You made this horrible
mistake investing in this new thing, but
don't feel bad about it. We still have
some respect for you."
And my response to them were I don't
care. I'm not going to sell it.
I believe in this thing. I think this is
the way money should work.
Nobody can confiscate your Bitcoin from
you. Nobody can censor you
for political reasons.
This is the
ultimate
means of exchange.
And again, I'm now talking about
Bitcoin, but it relates to
cryptocurrencies in general. So, I have
been able to fund my uh lifestyle, so to
say, from my Bitcoin investment. Some
people think if I'm able to rent nice
locations or
fly private, it's because I somehow
extract extract money from Telegram. But
like I said, Telegram is a money losing
operation for me personally.
Bitcoin is something that allowed me to
uh
stay afloat
and I believe it will come to a point
when Bitcoin is worth $1 million. Just
look at the the trends. The governments
keep printing money like no tomorrow.
Nobody's printing Bitcoin. There's
a predictable inflation and then it
stops. It's a certain point.
Bitcoin is here to stay. All the fiat
currencies remains to be seen. Uh let me
ask you a deeply philosophical serious
question. In your first Tucker
interview, you had two interesting
chairs in the background. I think they
reference a now legendary meme. Uh the
choice is Pikachl.
[Music]
Uh what is the philosophical wisdom in
the dilemma that these two chairs
present? Have you had to face the
dilemma yourself personally?
>> Not this exact dilemma. I think this is
uh a riddle that people have to face in
uh Russian prisons
and metaphorically
it's describing all the situations where
you presented a choice between two
suboptimal options. When you're running
a big business or when you're running a
large country, it is similar. you
sometimes face this dilemma. What are
you going to do? This very horrible
thing or this also very horrible thing.
So I think the right answer to this
riddle is
not to do any of these things.
Reframe the question.
Design a solution that turns
a disadvantage into an advantage.
and then use it to cope with the other
side of the problem. So, do you know the
answer to that riddle?
>> No. Somebody on the internet said uh
which is
basically um uh try to avoid the
situations where such dilemas present
themselves where there is no right
answer.
>> This is one of the ways to answer this
question. If if you got to a tricky
situation that probably earlier you made
a certain mistake,
>> you fucked up already.
>> Should have been avoided. 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 then they use them to cut off the
objects from the other chair.
And you know what objects I'm talking
about.
>> That's a very engineering solution. I'm
glad somebody came up with that.
>> I believe this is the right answer. We
are often being manipulated
by politicians,
by corporate leaders
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.
I don't think we should be buying into
that.
Okay. On this theme of absurdity and
ridiculousness, let me there's an object
here that um appeared in the
not many people seem to have noticed
this. Uh, people should go watch your
excellent conversation in the Oslo
Freedom Forum. Uh, behind you. I'm no
archaeologist,
but I believe this is a a um,
how should I put it? A
walrus penis bone.
And uh, it was behind you. You told me
that that you brought it with you to uh,
France and back to Dubai. I assume it
brings you luck of some sort. Uh what's
what's the what what why did you bring
it with you everywhere? Is it kind of
like um you know in America they have a
wishbone? Is it just a large wishbone?
Cuz wishbone brings you luck. And I
should also point out that just like
with Telegram with the art, there's tiny
little walruses.
And thanks to you, I had to also find
out that a lot of mammals have a bone
inside their penis. And the evolutionary
advantage I guess of having a bone is
quite obvious. It actually raises the
question why humans don't have a actual
bone inside their penis.
A lot of questions there. That's a very
interesting subject. The reason I have
this is because the
tribe that is uh almost gone extinct in
Siberia and Mongolia called the Veni
passed me this gift from them. Normally
they would craft something like this
only for their most respected leaders.
It is supposed to be a token of their
appreciation for bravery, courage,
leadership.
Ironically, it also translates
in a very specific way into the Russian
language. In Russian, walrus's penis
means something a bit funny, which is
often used to describe nothing. So for
example, if you're being requested
by say certain government
or a certain business partner
to provide something that you're not
willing to provide,
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 the deep message it is an
indirect um rebellion
by the way in the form of Soviet Union
there was and in a lot of places
throughout history some of the rebellion
had to take this kind of symbolic
metaphoric form through poetry through
children's stories it's the uh the
beauty of human language and art that
we're able to do that say f you to
whatever forces that try to overpower
us. We say fu through poetry, through
art, and sometimes through through a
rather large walrus penis bone
carried by what appears to be either a
happy sum or a cat of some sort. They
asked a lot of questions about this
walrus's penis bone in the airport.
Both here in the UAE and in France, they
are always very interested in this
thing.
There seems to be some confusion over
how many kids you have.
It's often said to be over 100. Can you
explain
how many kids you have?
The truthful answer to this question is
I don't really know how many biological
kids I have exactly 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.
Initially a friend of mine asked me to
help
because they were trying to have a baby
with his wife and uh
they experienced certain health issues
that had prevented them to do it the
natural way and uh he asked me we don't
he told me we don't want to just rely on
some random anonymous genetic material
we want somebody we know and respect to
be the biological father of of our kid.
And I said, "You got to be kidding me.
Sounds ridiculous. What are you even
talking about?" But then I realized it's
it's it's actually a serious issue. And
they were not the only couple struggling
with that. So eventually I got persuaded
into doing more of it. I I can't say I'm
incredibly proud of that, but I think it
was the right thing to do. Particularly
at the time when I thought, okay, I
probably don't have much time
on this planet left.
Things are getting trickier and
trickier.
So, if I can help some couples
have babies, let's do it.
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
and the kids who are just my biological
kids that I never seen.
As long as they can as they can
establish their
shared DNA with me
someday, maybe in 30 years from now,
they have to be
entitled for a share of my estate after
I'm gone. And that made a lot of noise
in the news for some reason. People get
very excited by this kind of news. I got
a lot of messages from people claiming
they're my kids. I got a lot of requests
from people asking me to adopt them.
The memes were priceless. But
understanding that no, it's not a thing
that most people do. I don't see
anything wrong with it. If anything, I
think more people should
be donating sperm. So we should say like
the the 100 plus kids is from that and
you also have naturally conceived kids
and it was a pretty bold decision to
from a financial perspective to treat
them all equally
and also quite interesting was that you
uh kind of said that they don't receive
any money for the first few decades of
their life. Can you describe that
thinking?
>> Yeah, I think overabundance
paralyzes motivation and willpower.
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.
This
removes
the incentive to
work on
developing their own skills,
remove the incentive to study, to work.
So, I thought if they're going to have
this
money,
it should be something that they would
only get when they're already adult.
It's still risky,
but one of the reasons I decided it
makes more sense to divide this um
huge wealth that
I'm likely to leave behind
among
a 100 or more than 100 people is that it
won't be too much
for every single
descendant.
But at the same time, some people do the
calculation. It's it's it's still
many many millions of dollars for each
child. So, I'm not sure it it helps too
much. Uh on the topic of abundance
offline, we had a lot of fascinating
philosophical discussions. One of which
was about the mouse paradise experiment
also known as universe 25.
It's an experiment from the 1960s and
early '7s uh conducted by ethologist
John B. Calhoun and uh we can talk about
this one for hours also I'm sure but it
was an experiment w with a few hundreds
of individual mice compartments
and they provided them with unlimited
food water nesting no predator stable
temperatures and frequent cleaning.
Basically the definition of a buttons as
far as mice go. And the interesting
aspect of this experiment is that at
first the population doubled, it grew
very quickly. But then it leveled off
and certain really negative social
things started happening like mothers
neglected or kill their young. Violent
attacks and hypersexual activity became
widespread. Some quote unquote beautiful
ones, largely inactive well-groomed mice
withdrew, refusing to mate or interact.
So all of these kind of societal
qualities that we see as negative for
the functioning of a society started to
emerge because of the abundance and uh
finally the collapse the reproduction
rates crashed social dysfunction spread
to the next generation and eventually
just went extinct ext
it it plummeted steadily to zero despite
the fact that there's ongoing resource
abundance
as Uh this description states the last
miles died surrounded by untouched food
and water.
So I mean there's deep wisdom to that
about abundance. It seems you've
mentioned this in different contexts
throughout this conversation is it seems
like scarcity it seems like constraints
it seems like non-abundance
is essential for human flourishing which
is a counterintuitive notion it's true
for mice and I think it's probably true
for humans too we have evolved to
overcome scarcity
almost by definition there's There's
never been such thing as
infinite amount of food or entertainment
in our lives before. Now
we seem as a species to lose our ability
to identify purpose in a world where you
have everything and everything lose its
meaning.
Restrictions are important. I think
though that they should be coming from
within. It should be self-restriction
rather than a restriction
in order to create purpose and meaning
in life. In a way, I was lucky in a very
counterintuitive way because I grew up
poor. I didn't have money when I was a
teenager.
I had the same jacket for years.
which was bought on a secondhand
marketplace.
My father wouldn't receive
his salary as a university professor for
months because
the Russian state was almost bankrupt
back then.
My mom had to
juggle two jobs
to take care of us. It was not easy. But
it also created purpose. It created
meaning.
It created priorities.
It allowed us to focus on things that
mattered. Allowed us to
develop our character and intellectual
abilities. Now if we had everything,
why do anything?
This mice
suffered societal collapse
that was irreversible. And this is not
an accident. This kind of experiment has
been repeated countless times at a
certain point. Social dysfunction and
the erosion of social roles becomes
contagious
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
and it goes extinct. It's fascinating
because we're creating technologies and
this is what AI is proposing to our
future generations
uh as a problem to solve which is AI may
very well create abundance and so we
will be like these mice potentially
whether it's AI or other kinds of
technologies that increase and give more
and more to all of us and it is a thing
that is good decrease the amount of
suffering in the world increase the
quality of life but as we reach towards
that abundance
the the fabric that connects us rooted
in our biology that's developed by
evolution
might create a real challenge for us. We
should find the right balance between
chaos and order, between
self-restriction
and freedom for creativity.
>> Your father recently celebrated his 80th
birthday. You had a conversation with
him. Uh he gave you some life advice. I
think you mentioned to me one of the
things he said uh was not to just
speak of your principles but to live
them to lead by example.
I think this is something you already do
well. Um maybe can you speak to what
you've learned about life from your
father?
Maybe some of the lessons he told you on
in the conversation you've had with him
on his birthday.
I'm incredibly lucky to
have my father. He is a person who wrote
countless books on ancient Rome and
ancient Roman literature,
dozens of scientific papers. And I
always remember him working. He would be
busy
typing his books and articles and an old
school typewriter
back in the late 80s, early 90s.
He was relentless.
The example he set 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.
So observing our father
was a big lesson by itself.
It wasn't necessary for him to say
anything to us. And then at the same
time, he was incredibly patient,
emotionally resilient.
And you know, my mom,
great woman, incredibly smart, highly
educated,
but
she would sometimes
try to test the patience of my father.
And it's a
straight rooted in our biology. It's
it's an there's an evolutionary
explanation for that that women
sometimes tend to do that. and he
demonstrated incredible patience all the
time. 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 10, but
you make a mistake once and they will
instantly copy it. If you're telling
your kids not to use a smartphone, but
you're using a smartphone all the time
yourself
and coming up with all kinds of
sophisticated, brilliant explanations
why they shouldn't be using a
smartphone,
it won't land.
It's bound to fail.
So, you lead by example. And there are
numerous lessons. staying positive,
looking at the bright side,
never despair, be honest. 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 in a way. Cannot be moral. It
cannot have deeply rooted principles.
Cannot have integrity.
in the meaning that we understand it as
human beings.
I love the fact that you're talking to
your 8-year-old father and you're
talking about
AGI
and the difference between human the
human spirit human nature and what AGI
AI is able to achieve and conscience is
the thing that
humans have the the the ability to know
the right from wrong.
>> This is the lesson that he gave me.
One of my goals in life is never to
disappoint him.
>> Another thing we've talked about
which I think is a fascinating topic um
is the power of the mind, power of
thought. Do do you believe you can
affect your life and reality by thinking
about it by manifesting it into being?
What do you think?
There are many explanations why it
works.
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.
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.
Maybe some people exist that can just
sit on the bank of a river and
materialize things by the power of their
thought.
But I'm not sure I'm one of these
people.
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.
prolonged effort, hard work
coupled with
positive focus, thinking about the
thing.
>> Oh yes. So over many many many days it
is possible to imagine our world as a
highdimensional universe where humans
have the ability to navigate
through it with the power of belief
which is coupled with
positive emotion
and logical thinking.
But we are getting into an esoteric
realm.
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.
I agree with you fully and I like what
you said uh in the way you were thinking
about it. uh you've told me before that
maybe there's a way that with effort and
with a focused mind you can shape you
can morph the sort of landscape of
probabilities
around you. It's a nice way to visualize
it and somehow our effort and our focus
changes
the things that are likely and less
likely. And by focusing on it, we make
those thing more and more likely at
least as an estimate. That's the kind of
field that we through our thoughts and
through our actions change that field.
And then there's 8 billion of us doing
so. And together there's this collective
intelligence that creates the world we
see around us. Like like the uh like the
mice
and like you said, us as a humanity
together are perfect. I like that you
said that.
>> I admire your belief in the fact that we
get to experience
this together because it's not obvious.
Maybe each of us experiences it his own
or her own universe. And maybe every
second the universe splits into a
billion of different universes and
everything that can happen happens.
And there is a universe where
say I died in 2013. Maybe every time I
die I actually get to shift to a
parallel universe when I don't die. And
then it keeps going and at certain
points
we achieve this quantum immortality when
we're 1,000 years old.
But a lot of people from
other versions of reality
think we are long gone. Yeah, this is uh
something you explained to me the idea
of quantum immortality which is a
thought experiment which I find deeply
fascinating. People should look into it
which is very crisp clean uh consequence
of the many worlds interpretation of
quantum mechanics that we as conscious
beings can't experience our death. We
can only
as we branch into these uh many many
worlds only the living consciousnesses
get to experience it. some some sense.
Yeah, there's many universes
if we're to seriously take the many
worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics. There's many universes where
you died many times, especially you. And
I'm glad we're in the in a universe
where we get to share the table with
this impressive bone, a little humor,
and a lot of serious um topics covered
today. Once again, I can't say enough.
Um, a giant thank you for me and a giant
thank you from hundreds of millions of
people that follow your work uh for
you fighting for the freedom of all of
us to speak and creating a platform uh
where we can do so. And thank you so
much for talking today, brother. It's
been an honor getting to know you and uh
to be able to call you a friend.
>> Thank you for saying that.
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 and hopefully
we'll get to spend more fun moments in
the years to come together. Thank you,
brother. Thank you for listening to this
conversation with Pavo Durov. To support
this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now,
let me try to articulate some things
I've been thinking about. If you would
like to submit questions or topics like
this for me to talk about in the future,
go to lexfreedman.com/am.
I'd like to use this opportunity to talk
about France Kafka, one of my favorite
writers. uh the reason he has been on my
mind is that his work the trial and the
case of Pavod Durov in France has let's
say eerie parallels both metaphorically
and literally of course the trial is a
work of fiction but I think it is often
useful to go to the surreal world of
literature even of the over-the-top
dystopian variety like 1984 animal farm
brave new world the trial the castle
metamorphosis even the plague by uh
Albert Kamu all to better understand our
real world and the destructive paths we
have the potential to go down together
which also hopefully helps us understand
how to avoid doing so. So let me zoom
out and speak about France Kovka. Who
was he? He was an insurance clerk who
wrote at night. He died young and almost
completely unknown and he asked for his
manuscripts to be burned. Luckily for
us, his friend Max Broad refused to do
so, giving us the work of what I
consider to be one of 20th century's
greatest writers.
In his work, Kofka wrote about the cold
machine-like reduction of humans to case
files through the labyrinth of
institutional power. He wrote about an
individual's feeling of guilt even when
a crime has not been committed. Or more
generally, he wrote about the feeling of
anxiety that is part of the human
condition in our modern chaotic world.
His writing style was to use short
declarative sentences to describe the
surreal and the absurd and in so doing
effectively, I think, convey the feeling
of an experience versus simply
describing the experience. For example,
famously, his work, The Metamorphosis,
opens with the following lines.
As Gregor Samza awoke one morning from
uneasy dreams, he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic
insect.
He was lying in his hard armorplated
back, and when he lifted his head a
little, he could see his domelike brown
belly divided into stiff arched
segments, on top of which the bed quilt
could hardly keep in position and was
about to slide off completely. His
numerous legs, which were pitifully thin
compared to the rest of his bulk, waved
helplessly before his eyes.
Kafka, I think, effectively uses this
image of being transformed into a giant
bug stuck on his back to convey a
feeling of helplessness and uselessness
to his family, to his job, to society.
The feeling of being a burden to
everyone, dehumanized, alienated, and
abandoned. the feeling of being only
temporarily valued as long as he served
some function for his job or for his
family and quickly discarded otherwise.
I will probably talk about this work in
more depth at another time because it is
so haunting and I think it is such a
profound description of the burden of
existence in modern society for many
people. But here let me talk about
another of his work, The Trial.
In this novel, the main character,
Joseph Kay, is a successful bank
officer, and he's arrested on his
birthday for an unspecified crime by a
kind of amorphous court whose
authorities everywhere and nowhere. He
navigates a labyrinth-like legal system
where everyone knows about his case, but
no one can really explain it. The
so-called trial never actually occurs in
any conventional sense. Instead, Joseph
Kay's entire life becomes the
proceedings leading up to the trial. In
a sense, the trial is the state of being
accused itself, a permanent condition
rather than a singular event.
Kofka's genius in this work was to show
that modern institutions don't need to
hold trials. They just need to hold you
in the permanent looming possibility of
one. Public attention to this case, both
positive and negative, gives Joseph Kay
a feeling of constantly being judged by
people around him. This wears at his
mind and his psychological well-being
begins to deteriorate.
In a sense, the trial doesn't need to
convict him. The internal psychological
turmoil and the external social scrutiny
performs the conviction and the eventual
execution.
when exactly one year after his arrest,
Joseph Kay is visited by two men who
walk him courteously through the city to
an abandoned quarry and stab him in the
heart without Joseph K resisting.
To me, the trial shows that Tyranny's
final victory isn't when it kills you,
but when you hold still for the knife,
not because you're forced, but because
you've been exhausted into submission.
Once again, it is a haunting story of
the soullessness of bureaucracy in its
suffocation of the human spirit. I
highly recommend this short book, and
I'll probably talk about it even more in
the future.
I don't think it's especially useful for
me to speak to any parallels between the
trial and Pablo Durov's case, because
after all, the trial is a work of
fiction.
But on a positive note, let me report
that as far as I saw, Pavo has
maintained optimism and a general
positive outlook throughout this whole
process. What I always fear in such
cases is that a bureaucratic system can
wear people down, exhaust them into
surrendering. I saw none of that with
Pablo. I don't think he knows how to
give up or give in, no matter how much
pressure he's under. Again, this is
truly inspiring to me. Also, now that
we're talking about it, let me mention
some other of Kafka's work that uh was
moving to me. The castle has similar
description as the trial does of the
absurd inaccessibility of those in
authority, of the nightmarish
bureaucracy. The character in the castle
is also named K. Both bureaucracies
operate through exhaustion, endless
deferrals, procedures, waiting rooms.
Again, highly relevant to modern times.
I can also highly recommend Kafka's in
the penal colony and hunger artist. Both
are too interesting and weird to explain
in depth here. But let me say the hunger
artist is a story that I think is
relevant to our modern-day attention
economy where so many people want to be
famous. It tells the story of uh let's
say professional faster who performs
starvation in a cage as entertainment
and he slowly loses his audience to New
York spectacles. So much so that
eventually when he starves himself to
death nobody cares.
Kovka's work is heavy. It serves as a
warning for the nightmare that
civilization can become. And yet I think
it is also a source of optimism because
when we can recognize elements of our
own world in Kafka stories when we can
see elements of our institutions in the
trial or in the castle when we can see
ourselves in Gregor Samza we're not just
diagnosing the disease we're proving
that we're still human and wise enough
to see it and name it. Kafka gave us the
goal to resist against such systems that
tried to dehumanize us and to ensure
that individual freedom and the human
spirit keep flourishing. I think it
will. I have faith in us humans. I love
you all.