Pavel Durov on Russia banning Telegram | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips

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 Dagestan, and it would 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 non-Russian source 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, 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 these 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 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 are 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 to suppress voices that 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 society, the way people can express themselves. I personally think it would be a huge mistake to ban a tool like Telegram in any country, particularly a large country such as Russia, because the Russian people are incredibly talented and resilient people. They are among the first to start utilizing some of these recent innovations that Telegram implements. They are the early adopters. I'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.

Well, protecting freedom of speech is not a way to make friends.