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“I’ve seen how governments suppress freedom” | Telegram founder Pavel Durov at Oslo Freedom Forum — Transcript

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0:00[applause]
0:05[applause]
0:09>> Passengers of the Titanic
0:12actually didn't want to leave the ship
0:14for almost 2 hours
0:16after it hit the iceberg.
0:18People thought the Titanic was
0:20unsinkable.
0:22Lifeboats left half empty.
0:27Only the last half an hour people
0:29started to panic.
0:31But by that time it was already too
0:32late.
0:34Not enough lifeboats,
0:36nowhere to hide,
0:38nowhere to run.
0:41Now, I came here today to tell you that
0:43we find ourselves in a similar
0:45predicament, in a similar situation.
0:49Our ship has already hit the iceberg.
0:53We have already started
0:56to sink
0:57without even realizing it.
1:00And I'm talking about the ship of our
1:02personal freedoms.
1:04Personal freedoms have been eroded
1:05everywhere in the world, almost without
1:08exception.
1:11I know this from personal experience.
1:14I've been running large social media
1:16platforms for almost 20 years. Actually,
1:20exactly 20 years.
1:23And I witnessed firsthand
1:26which methods governments use to
1:28suppress our freedoms and take away
1:32our basic rights.
1:34I've seen all the tricks,
1:37the PR tricks, the legal tricks, the
1:39political tricks.
1:43The manipulations, the official excuses.
1:46I've became an expert at this.
1:49And the thing that bothers me most today
1:52is that some of the same tricks that
1:54have been employed
1:57by authoritarian regimes in places like
1:59Russia or China and Iran.
2:03And now being also used
2:05in some Western countries.
2:09But maybe I'm exaggerating things,
2:11right? Let's look at the facts.
2:14Thousands of people are getting arrested
2:17every year in the United Kingdom
2:20for social media posts.
2:23You say something politically incorrect
2:25online, you may end up being fined or
2:28spend some time in prison. In Germany,
2:31the largest country in the European
2:34Union,
2:37people get arrested and persecuted for
2:39insulting politicians online. Thousands
2:42of people every year. You call a
2:45politician a bigot or a thief online and
2:47you can serve up to 3 years in prison.
2:51So now people are afraid to use their
2:54real identities. People stop using their
2:57real names
2:59when they make comments online.
3:02And the European Commission is pushing
3:04for a new measure.
3:07A measure to require that all social
3:09media users present their IDs
3:14before they can access social media
3:16sites.
3:19Their official justification is child
3:22protection.
3:23They want to ban social media services
3:27for everybody under 16. And for that,
3:30they need people to verify their age
3:33by presenting their ID.
3:37But what will happen if social media
3:39sites are banned for teenagers?
3:42Will it bring harm or good?
3:46Actually, we know the answer to this
3:47question.
3:49Why? Because it has already been tried.
3:52This experiment has already been
3:54conducted. It's It's has been carried
3:56on.
3:58In Russia.
4:00So, Russia banned Telegram, the largest
4:03social media platform at the time,
4:07for all of its citizens
4:09because we refused to comply with their
4:11demands for mass surveillance and
4:13censorship.
4:16However, 95% of Russian teenagers still
4:20use Telegram
4:22every month.
4:24How? They use VPNs. They bypass the
4:27entire thing.
4:29And there's very little you can do with
4:31with VPNs. Russia is trying very hard.
4:34They have invested billions in trying to
4:36fight VPNs. They're banning hundreds of
4:38VPNs every month
4:41using
4:42IP addresses and traffic patterns. They
4:45even installed surveillance hardware
4:48into every data sensor of every internet
4:51provider in the country.
4:53Trying to monitor all the traffic and
4:56trying to prevent people from using
4:58VPNs. And they failed. Despite all this
5:01effort, they failed.
5:03The majority of the population of Russia
5:05still uses Telegram. The majority of the
5:07population of Iran still uses Telegram
5:10as well.
5:11Despite the fact that Iran has been
5:12blocking Telegram for all of its
5:14citizens since 2018.
5:18So, we know exactly what happens when
5:21you ban social media for part of your
5:24population. They just switch to VPN.
5:27The problem is, once we force teenagers
5:30and children to use VPNs, all kind of
5:35nasty, illegal, fringe content
5:39gets unlocked for them.
5:41Certain websites that have been banned
5:44years ago
5:46all of a sudden become available again.
5:50So, the children end up being in a
5:52larger danger
5:54than they're in now.
5:56And you can ask yourself, so if this
5:58policy is destined to fail, well,
6:00obviously,
6:02we see how it played out in other
6:04countries.
6:06Why is the European Commission and the
6:09United Kingdom and Australia and Canada
6:11and some other countries are pushing for
6:13this measure?
6:14Is it incompetence?
6:16Maybe.
6:18But the British government seems to have
6:21given an answer to this question.
6:24Publicly, they promoted the online
6:27safety act as a set of laws to protect
6:30children.
6:34To force
6:36people to verify their age
6:39in order to access social media. They
6:40needed to protect children.
6:43Privately though, they offered a
6:46different explanation.
6:48In their submission to the High Court of
6:50England published last year, the British
6:52government said that the principal part
6:56of the online safety act had nothing to
6:58do with protecting children. Instead,
7:03they said, and I quote,
7:06the main part of the online safety act
7:09was aimed at capturing large platforms
7:13with significant influence over public
7:16discourse.
7:18Now, let's think about it.
7:21They used protection of children as a
7:24pretext, where in fact in fact, they
7:27wanted
7:30more control over political speech
7:32online.
7:34And this is very sad
7:35because
7:37protecting children is exactly the the
7:41justification that has been used in
7:44countless other cases by authoritarian
7:46regimes
7:48over the course of the last century.
7:51Why? Because once somebody says child
7:54protection, all of a sudden
7:56it triggers
7:58very ancient, very deep parts of our
8:00brain.
8:02Who would be against protecting
8:03children?
8:06Everybody is scared for the future of
8:08their offspring.
8:12Once somebody says we need to protect
8:14[music]
8:15the children, they're in danger,
8:17it completely bypasses logic. It
8:20bypasses debate. It bypasses
8:22rationality.
8:26All of a sudden, people are ready to
8:27give up everything.
8:29And authoritarian regimes were able to
8:32smuggle all kinds of repressive
8:34legislation
8:35under the guise of protecting children.
8:40Now, the same justification is being
8:42used by the European Commission
8:45to push for a set of surveillance laws,
8:48the so-called chat control,
8:51the chat control initiative.
8:54For 5 years, the European Commission has
8:57been trying to
9:00force
9:02a new set of laws that would require
9:04every messaging app to implement a back
9:07door to their encryption.
9:10So that everything that we share online,
9:13every private message,
9:16every private photo
9:18that we sent
9:20using apps like Telegram or WhatsApp or
9:22any other
9:23would be automatically monitored.
9:27And if the system detects that we are
9:30trying to do something illegal, it
9:32alerts
9:34the authorities.
9:36The justification here again is
9:39child protection.
9:41And this has been tried on the European
9:44level and also on the national level.
9:48The French government has been trying to
9:50pass a similar law
9:53that would basically mandate mass
9:56surveillance
9:58on the national level.
10:00The French Senate
10:02has approved this law.
10:04It was stuck on the level of National
10:06Assembly,
10:07but the French Senate thought it was a
10:09reasonable
10:11and a good idea to enact
10:13mass surveillance.
10:17So, this shows how dangerous it is and
10:18how close we are
10:20even here
10:23in Europe
10:25to the to
10:27a stage where we end up
10:30being monitored.
10:32Now, the French used slightly different
10:35different justification. They said, "We
10:37need
10:39to combat crime. We need to do something
10:42about terrorism. We need to do something
10:45about drug trafficking.
10:48And that's why we need to spy on you.
10:52For your own protection, you have to
10:54give up your essential right to privacy.
10:58And this again has been tried countless
11:00times
11:02in the history of humanity where we
11:05or different nations
11:07throughout history have been offered an
11:09exchange.
11:11Give up some of your essential liberty
11:14in exchange for some temporary safety.
11:18And this deal, this offer is always a
11:21scam and it always turned out to be a
11:24scam.
11:27>> [applause]
11:34>> You Benjamin Franklin who said, "Those
11:37who are willing to give up
11:39their essential liberty for some
11:41temporary safety deserve neither liberty
11:45nor safety."
11:48>> [applause]
11:53>> And we see that.
11:56We see that in counter spaces. Ask
11:58people living in Russia
12:00or living in Iran whether they feel
12:02safer today
12:04than they felt 10-15 years ago.
12:07They definitely lost a lot of their
12:09freedoms in the last decade or two.
12:12Have they gained any safety?
12:14I doubt that.
12:18Once you allow
12:21law enforcement, police have access to
12:24your messages,
12:25you will not prevent crime.
12:27The criminals will be the first to
12:29switch onto other tools,
12:32more secure. They will use VPNs. They
12:35will use private secret apps.
12:38They can even write code their own
12:41encrypted messaging app now in the age
12:43of AI.
12:45The criminals will be fine.
12:47It will be the law-abiding citizens who
12:49will be put in danger.
12:52It will be the ordinary people that will
12:54have their privacy taken away from them.
12:58Not the criminals.
13:00Well, how do I know that? Maybe I'm
13:01inventing things.
13:03Again, from my experience in Russia 15
13:06years ago when I was still running VK,
13:09the largest social network in Russia at
13:11the time,
13:13we started to receive weird
13:16data requests from from the Russian
13:18police.
13:19You know, back then VK actually
13:21disclosed in some cases contents of
13:24private messages. Unlike Telegram today,
13:27which doesn't disclose it ever,
13:29VK, back in the day, did that, provided
13:33there was an official justification.
13:35And we started to notice something
13:37weird.
13:38Something was off about this data
13:40request coming from the Russian police.
13:43We realized
13:46that the people who were included in
13:49these investigations
13:51had nothing to do with with the crimes
13:53that were described there.
13:56So, we started to investigate the
13:58investigators.
14:01And we came to a conclusion to the
14:02conclusion pretty fast
14:06that the police was corrupt.
14:09They were were trying to access private
14:12messages of innocent people in order
14:16to then blackmail them and sell their
14:18private data to criminals.
14:22They used it for harassment
14:24and other things.
14:27So, you could say, "Okay,
14:29you had this
14:31um traumatizing experience in Russia,
14:34but surely nothing of the kind can
14:36happen in the civilized West."
14:40Well, I have bad news for you.
14:43Last year, a French tax official was
14:47caught stealing the financial data
14:51of people
14:53who held large amounts of crypto assets
14:55and other wealth.
14:58So, a French tax bureaucrat was selling
15:03personal financial data of French
15:05citizens
15:07to criminals.
15:09Now, as a result of this leak and
15:11countless other leaks from French
15:13government systems,
15:16you have a catastrophic rise in the
15:19number of kidnappings in France.
15:23Just in the first 3 months of 2026, you
15:26have over 40 victims of kidnappings in
15:30France. People getting tortured,
15:33harmed, [snorts]
15:35harassed, humiliated,
15:38all because the government wanted too
15:40much data and failed to protect it.
15:45And now they want more of the data.
15:47The situation is already catastrophic as
15:49it is,
15:51but they don't want to stop there.
15:53They also want to access your personal
15:55messages. They want to access IDs of
15:58everybody who's using social media.
16:03Imagine the damage it can inflict
16:07if they get what they want.
16:11Now, this is already completely insane
16:14and unbelievable.
16:16But there's a third method, a third
16:20issue.
16:21>> [snorts]
16:22>> A trick that has been used by
16:24authoritarians for decades.
16:27And now it is being increasingly
16:30exported from the East to the West.
16:34I'm talking about selective enforcement
16:38of laws. Now, the way it works is pretty
16:40straightforward.
16:41First,
16:43you need to introduce
16:44a large number of laws. You need to
16:47overburden a certain certain industry
16:50with
16:52excessive
16:54mutually exclusive contradictory
16:56regulation.
16:59As a result,
17:01you make compliance impossible.
17:03Now you can treat every
17:06entrepreneur, every CEO, every business
17:09owner
17:11in this country in a certain industry
17:15as a criminal.
17:16But then the government carefully starts
17:18to choose who to persecute.
17:21If the business owner is loyal, if it
17:23complies with immoral
17:26and lawful demands from the government,
17:30gives certain political favors,
17:32then the law enforcement system and the
17:35judicial system look the other way.
17:39They don't do anything.
17:41But if the business owner decides to
17:44stand up
17:46for the constitutional rights
17:48of his or her fellow citizens,
17:51if they
17:52refuse to cave in
17:55to political
17:57demands from the authoritarian
17:58government, then
18:01the persecution and the enforcement of
18:03laws comes in full.
18:07And when somebody starts to criticize
18:09the government for doing that,
18:11the
18:13eternal perennial response is, "We're
18:16just
18:18enforcing the law.
18:20You don't want to live in a country
18:22which is lawless. We're just enforcing
18:25the laws."
18:26I personally experienced that
18:29in my days in Russia.
18:31I had a criminal investigation against
18:33me
18:34in 2013. I believe I have a criminal
18:37investigation against me in Russia
18:38today.
18:41But interestingly,
18:43this is something that we see
18:45increasingly in the West as well. And
18:47you can say, "There is no way it can
18:48happen.
18:50It's something from the world of the
18:52barbaric East."
18:54Well, I have bad news.
18:57Elon Musk said that the European
18:59Commission offered him a secret deal
19:03where they demanded that he
19:06conducts
19:08censorship
19:09of certain political narratives on his
19:12platform and in exchange the European
19:15Commission promised him not to enforce
19:18certain fines and laws on his company.
19:22Elon Musk said that he refused that
19:24offer.
19:27But most other platforms accepted it.
19:34Then Elon's company was hit by a
19:38120
19:39million euro fine
19:42from the European Commission
19:45for seemingly unrelated issues,
19:47something that has to deal with
19:48transparency.
19:51Now, we can doubt the words of Elon
19:53Musk. Maybe he was inventing things,
19:55right?
19:56But unfortunately
19:59his words are at least
20:01indirectly confirmed by the results of
20:04the investigation conducted by the US
20:05Congress.
20:09The US Congress published emails between
20:13the European Commission officials and
20:16managers of
20:17large social media platforms during the
20:20pandemic.
20:24These emails included
20:29attempts to pressure
20:32all these networks
20:34to silence political narratives and
20:37accounts
20:39that were inconvenient
20:41for the European Commission at that
20:43time.
20:45So,
20:46you had Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
20:50YouTube and others.
20:53Ban, censor,
20:56>> [snorts]
20:56>> down rank, shadow ban,
20:59demote
21:01accounts and narratives
21:04that spread inconvenient truths or
21:07inconvenient narratives. The official
21:09justification for that
21:11was that the European Commission was
21:13trying to combat misinformation and
21:17conspiracy theories
21:20during the pandemic.
21:23Well, now years after, it seems that
21:27many of those so-called conspiracy
21:29theories turned out to be at least
21:31partially true and in any case were
21:34worthy of a public debate.
21:36Now, everything from the artificial
21:39origins of COVID
21:41to the limited nature of the anti-COVID
21:44measures
21:45to the immense harm done to the young
21:48generation by school closures
21:51all of it, once considered
21:54conspiracy theories, is now becoming
21:56part of the mainstream
21:59debate and the mainstream view of what
22:01happened during COVID.
22:04So, those narratives were silenced
22:07not because they were untrue.
22:10They were silenced because they were
22:12inconvenient
22:15by those people in power.
22:20And if this is not
22:22political censorship I don't know what
22:24is.
22:26Now, I myself
22:28has been personally
22:31exposed to selective enforcement of laws
22:35also in Europe.
22:36Not just in Russia.
22:39And I talked about
22:41it last year in this stage
22:44uh
22:44after I was arrested in Paris for
22:48reasons that are still unclear in 2024.
22:53I got offered a secret deal by the head
22:54of the French intelligence
22:56who asked me to silence certain
22:59political voices.
23:01Well, I refused that deal and I'm still
23:03under this investigation and still
23:05facing many years in prison.
23:08But,
23:09I don't want to talk about this today.
23:12I want to
23:13conclude
23:14by telling you a related story.
23:18Something that happened during these
23:19days when I
23:22was detained in Paris and I was spending
23:25a few days in this
23:27police custody, basically a jail cell.
23:33I was interrogated for
23:35almost 3 days
23:37and there was this translator
23:39that was helping us. He was appointed by
23:41the judge.
23:44And after 3 days of translating
23:48during one of this uh
23:50pauses between sessions
23:53the translator was sitting there
23:55seemingly shocked.
23:57Perhaps she was shocked by the selective
23:59and political nature of the charges
24:01brought against me.
24:04But she looked at me, she looked at the
24:05police officers present and she said,
24:09"I left the Soviet Union in the '80s
24:12because I wanted to escape an
24:14environment
24:15where
24:16my freedoms are limited. I wanted to
24:19escape an environment
24:21where human rights are disrespected.
24:25But now,
24:26after witnessing what I've witnessed,
24:30I feel like the Soviet Union
24:33is catching up with me.
24:36I feel like I'm back in the Soviet
24:38Union.
24:39In that [snorts] room in Paris,
24:42that woman who escaped
24:45the Soviet Union
24:47felt
24:49she's back in the Soviet Union. And of
24:52course, perhaps she was being over
24:54dramatic.
24:55Perhaps she was exaggerating things.
24:57but if we let the current trends
25:00continue,
25:02we can end up in a place much worse than
25:04the Soviet Union of the '80s.
25:07You know, when my parents sent each
25:09other letters
25:11or sent telegrams to their relatives in
25:14the Soviet Union of the late '80s,
25:18sometimes they expressed hope that the
25:19KGB
25:21would not open the letters.
25:23That the KGB would would have enough
25:25resources to read everything that
25:28they have to write.
25:30After all, there was a human limit to
25:32surveillance.
25:34There were only so many KGB officers,
25:37only so many hours in a work day.
25:41Only so many letters they could open.
25:46Now, we don't have this luxury.
25:49In the world of AI, if we give up our
25:53right to privacy,
25:55you can be certain that every message
25:57that you send
25:59will be monitored, will be analyzed.
26:03Every draft, every thought, every idea
26:06will be scored.
26:08Every relationship will be mapped.
26:12The future can become much darker and
26:15more dystopian
26:16than the Soviet Union of the '80s.
26:21So, we don't have this luxury
26:25that the passengers of the Titanic had.
26:29We cannot afford
26:33to have this ship sunk.
26:37See, there is nowhere to escape.
26:40In the past, dissidents from
26:42authoritarian countries
26:43could flee to the west.
26:47But if the current trajectory continues,
26:50in a decade or two from now, they will
26:52have hard time
26:55trying to understand whether they have
26:57already left their repressive homeland
27:01or they're just entering another
27:03open-air prison.
27:07Now,
27:10I hope it will not come to that.
27:14But we need to realize the gravity of
27:16the situation. We need to start acting.
27:19We don't have a backup plan.
27:21We don't have lifeboats.
27:24There's no second West. There's no
27:26backup civilization.
27:29For decades or centuries, the West has
27:32been
27:33a guiding star for everybody who loved
27:35freedom, and we need to preserve that.
27:40If the ship of Western freedom sinks,
27:44the rest of the world
27:46is likely to follow.
27:48We will lose freedoms everywhere.
27:53So, we cannot let this happen.
27:57We cannot let this ship sink.
28:01The only way forward
28:04is to fix this ship.
28:07Let's do that.
28:08Thank you very much.
28:11>> [applause]

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