He left Russia because the government made a new law, that wanted all social media companies to keep a separate database for Russian citizens, in Russia. i.e. home turf. In some respects it controls the servers then. Also, I believe the government were a little freaked out by the digital currency (TON) because the Government were also planning to launch a coin.
Most of the SM companies complied to the new rules or left - for example Linkedin is not available in Russia. He chose to run Telegram from Dubai, but there are rumors that he was making an effort to go back to Russia.
The policy of keeping citizen data on a separate data-base is not a ridiculous demand and makes sense if one wants to keep user-info safe from hacking by 'foreign actors'. In other words, the citizen data is Russian, and must remain so.
The problem was, the government also wanted access, whenever, upon a formal request - which is not that strange, given sites like FB and Insta, and Linkedin, who do that all the time, without any issues. If anything, the Russians are being polite about it, and aim to follow a formal, legal procedure. In any case, users fill out their profile for all to read, so 'government access' is really just a request for a targeted search, and a report upon the results.
And it is not censorship exactly, more like targeted surveillance. As OP suggested, they made alleged demands regarding Odessa, Maidan, Child Porn . Well, tracking of cell-phone pings is done over here too.
Compare the requests with the unfettered access the Western Intelligene agencies have to SM companies. (We are not supposed to talk about that, though).
But yeah, he chose to be French. Also his company was wildly succesful, but he is still the small fry in the SM space. So, low-hanging fruit.
I hear that the Russian Embassy is reaching out, even if the guy now has a French passport.
Yarovaya law it is called.
The requests were regarding Navalnyi opposition protests run by soros, etc players.
They used minors to get the pictures of arrested kids, like 12 y.o. Kids were told if they to be arrested they can sue in EU human rights courts and get money. The authorities requests for the data of organizers failed. Durov was in Azerbaijan during Putin's recent visit. Putin declined to see him. Russians are making fun of Durov now as his last name is a derivative from a word fool, but really hardly anyone like him since he broke Yarovaya law and left the country. Also telegram is used by military, thus keeping the servers outside the country with access to Amazon, etc is raising concerns.
He left Russia because the government made a new law, that wanted all social media companies to keep a separate database for Russian citizens, in Russia. i.e. home turf. In some respects it controls the servers then. Also, I believe the government were a little freaked out by the digital currency (TON) because the Government were also planning to launch a coin.
Most of the SM companies complied to the new rules or left - for example Linkedin is not available in Russia. He chose to run Telegram from Dubai, but there are rumors that he was making an effort to go back to Russia.
The policy of keeping citizen data on a separate data-base is not a ridiculous demand and makes sense if one wants to keep user-info safe from hacking by 'foreign actors'. In other words, the citizen data is Russian, and must remain so.
The problem was, the government also wanted access, whenever, upon a formal request - which is not that strange, given sites like FB and Insta, and Linkedin, who do that all the time, without any issues. If anything, the Russians are being polite about it, and aim to follow a formal, legal procedure. In any case, users fill out their profile for all to read, so 'government access' is really just a request for a targeted search, and a report upon the results.
And it is not censorship exactly, more like targeted surveillance. As OP suggested, they made alleged demands regarding Odessa, Maidan, Child Porn . Well, tracking of cell-phone pings is done over here too.
Compare the requests with the unfettered access the Western Intelligene agencies have to SM companies. (We are not supposed to talk about that, though).
But yeah, he chose to be French. Also his company was wildly succesful, but he is still the small fry in the SM space. So, low-hanging fruit.
I hear that the Russian Embassy is reaching out, even if the guy now has a French passport.
Yarovaya law it is called. The requests were regarding Navalnyi opposition protests run by soros, etc players. They used minors to get the pictures of arrested kids, like 12 y.o. Kids were told if they to be arrested they can sue in EU human rights courts and get money. The authorities requests for the data of organizers failed. Durov was in Azerbaijan during Putin's recent visit. Putin declined to see him. Russians are making fun of Durov now as his last name is a derivative from a word fool, but really hardly anyone like him since he broke Yarovaya law and left the country. Also telegram is used by military, thus keeping the servers outside the country with access to Amazon, etc is raising concerns.