The biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed, and you overcome them by imagining the worst thing that can happen to you and making yourself comfortable with it.

(00:00:00) The following is a conversation with Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, a messaging platform actively used by over 1 billion people. (00:00:11) Pavel has spent his life fighting for freedom of speech, building tools that protect human communication from surveillance and censorship. (00:00:20) For this, he has faced pressure from some of the most powerful governments and organizations on Earth. (00:00:27) In the face of this immense pressure, he has always held his ground, continuously fighting to protect use of privacy and the freedom of all of us humans to communicate with each other. (00:00:38) I got the chance to spend a few weeks with him and can definitively say that he's one of the most principled and fearless humans I've ever met. (00:00:47) Plus, when I posted that I'm hanging out with Pavel, (00:00:51) A lot of people, fans of his, wrote to me asking if he does, in fact, privately live the disciplined, ascetic life he's known for. (00:01:00) 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. (00:01:12) Yes, he's 100% that guy, which made the experience of hanging out with him really inspiring to me. (00:01:20) I'm grateful for it, and I'm grateful to now be able to call him a friend. (00:01:25) This podcast conversation is in parts philosophical about freedom, life, human nature, and the nature of government bureaucracies. (00:01:33) 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. (00:01:46) with an insane rate of introducing new, unique features. (00:01:51) 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, Telegram did it first. (00:02:03) So we discuss it all, from the Kafka-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. (00:02:15) And by the way, while this entire conversation is in English, we'll make captions and voiceover audio tracks available in multiple languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, French, and Hindi. (00:02:27) If this is of interest to you, will need to head over to the Lex Friedman channel on YouTube, where you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear icon, then clicking audio track, and then selecting the language you prefer. (00:02:41) Here, we only provide the original English version. (00:02:46) And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. (00:02:49) Check them out in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. (00:02:54) It is in fact the best way to support this podcast. (00:02:57) We got Miro for team collaboration, Masterclass for learning, Uplift Desk for my favorite office desks, Finn for customer service AI agents, Element for electrolytes, and Shopify for selling stuff online. (00:03:14) Choose wisely, my friends. (00:03:15) And now, on to the full ad reads. (00:03:18) I do try to make them interesting, but if you skip, please still check out our sponsors. (00:03:22) I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. (00:03:25) To get in touch with me, for whatever reason, go to alexfriedman.com slash contact. (00:03:31) All right, let's go. (00:03:34) This episode is brought to you by a new sponsor, Miro. (00:03:39) It's an online collaborative whiteboard platform. (00:03:42) You know, (00:03:43) like for brainstorming ideas together with your team, except on the interwebs. (00:03:49) They have this space called the Innovation Workspace that blends AI and humans, human creativity, to develop ideas. (00:03:59) So this is for multiple people. (00:04:01) So it enables teams to brainstorm, prototype, and iterate fast on the ideas. (00:04:06) I think a really big part of a successful team is being able to brainstorm. (00:04:11) Each individual person in a self-motivated way is coming up with ideas. (00:04:15) But then those ideas are put into the same kind of system where they can be integrated. (00:04:21) And the tension between those ideas can develop even better ideas. (00:04:25) And so you go and go and go and constantly improve. (00:04:28) So I think Miro is a really nice platform for that brainstorming process. (00:04:33) Help your teams develop great ideas into results with Miro. (00:04:37) Go to Miro.com to find out how. (00:04:40) That's M-I-R-O.com. (00:04:44) This episode is also brought to you by Masterclass. (00:04:47) And they're a new class called the Power Playbook, How to Win at Work. (00:04:54) It's actually a master class by a super strong and popular professor from Stanford, Jeff Pfeffer. (00:05:02) He has a lot of excellent lectures and books that study power and this (00:05:06) Masterclass is a sort of an applied study of power. (00:05:11) It provides A playbook that breaks down the rules of power and teaches you ways how they can be applied in the workplace. (00:05:17) It's like the Game of Thrones, but in the 21st century, capitalist system. (00:05:24) There you go. (00:05:24) It's a basic communication, body language, all that kind of stuff, how to position yourself so that you get a promotion, figuring out how to be influential. (00:05:33) I started listening to this masterclass and it's actually something I highly recommend. (00:05:37) It's called The Power Playbook, How to Win at Work. (00:05:41) And it became available on August 21st, so you should be able to get it now. (00:05:45) And you can get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Lex. (00:05:51) That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash Lex. (00:05:56) This episode is brought to you by Uplift Desk, the very desk I'm behind right now. (00:06:01) And I have many, many more of them in this whole place. (00:06:05) And I have several of them in the podcast room. (00:06:09) In fact, four. (00:06:10) And in that very room that you can see on camera, those desks have brought me a lot of happiness, both in the standing desk position and in the sitting position. (00:06:21) I mean, it's just really, really excellent product, really excellent company. (00:06:26) brings a smile to my face every time I think about them. (00:06:29) They have never disappointed in their customer service. (00:06:32) In the large selection of products that they provide, there's like some ridiculously insane number of possible deaths combination you could choose from. (00:06:43) The look, the size, all the different characteristics you can pick. (00:06:48) I've been a fan for a long, long time, long before they were a sponsor. (00:06:51) And when they became a sponsor, that's like a dream come true. (00:06:53) So please go support them so they continue being a sponsor. (00:06:57) Cause it's really cool when a product over the top definitively has made me happy for many years and they also are a sponsor. (00:07:05) Go to uplifteddesk.com slash Lex and use code Lex to get four free accessories, free same day shipping, free returns, a 15 year warranty, and an extra discount off your entire order. (00:07:18) That's UPLIFTDESK.com slash Lex. (00:07:25) This episode is also brought to you by Finn, a world-class, popular, excellent performing AI agent for customer service, 65% average resolution rate, trusted by over 5,000 customer service leaders, including so many ad companies, including Anthropic. (00:07:42) By the way, Anthropic has been killing it recently. (00:07:44) But anyway, the fact that they trust Finn (00:07:47) shows that these guys are legit. (00:07:50) Their Fin AI engine is continuously improving, which easily allows you to do the analyze, train, test, and deploy loop continuously over and over and over and over while it improves and gets better and adjusts your particular context and a particular set of customers. (00:08:05) And everything is always getting smarter, hopefully leading to happier customers. (00:08:12) It's built to handle complex multi-step queries like returns, exchanges, (00:08:16) disputes, delivering high-quality, personalized answers. (00:08:20) Anyway, go to fin.ai/lex to learn more about transforming your customer service and scaling your support team. (00:08:27) That's fin.ai/lex. (00:08:31) This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix that brings me a lot of joy. (00:08:38) I drink it in the morning, I drink it in the afternoon, I drink it in the evening, sipping on it right now. (00:08:43) I started doing a thing that makes my life significantly, in a small way, but it feels big, better when I go to hard training sessions that go for, 90 minutes to two hours on the mat, jujitsu, round after round after round. (00:09:00) For a long time, I usually prefer not to have much water just so I can focus on the training. (00:09:06) You know, every once in a while I'll go to the water fountain, that kind of stuff. (00:09:09) But bringing a cold, (00:09:12) bottle of water with a packet of watermelon salt element in it. (00:09:18) It's just that little break of sipping on this drink that I've come to associate with home and it's a little bit cold in the Texas heat. (00:09:29) I don't know. (00:09:29) It's just such a cool feeling. (00:09:31) It's a good feeling. (00:09:32) It makes me feel happy. (00:09:34) You get a free eight count sample pack for free with any purchase if you try it at drinkelement.com slash Lex. (00:09:43) And finally, this episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. (00:09:51) I built 20 minutes at lexgreeman.com slash store and I have a few shirts on there. (00:09:56) They're constantly upgrading every aspect of Shopify. (00:09:59) It's kind of incredible. (00:10:00) Now, I heard that they've upgraded fulfillment. (00:10:05) So everything you need to ship stuff. (00:10:07) If you're selling stuff online, you got to ship it most of the time. (00:10:10) And all of that is now built into Shopify, where that you can sell stuff online with Shopify. (00:10:15) But again, the thing I'm going to keep talking about, which makes it incredible, is that Shopify is this super scalable cloud infrastructure. (00:10:28) Originally, in large part, built on Ruby on Rails. (00:10:32) And huge brands use Shopify Plus for enterprise-grade scale. (00:10:38) I'm also reading here that Shopify can support headless commerce, so you can use Shopify just on the back end and then do your own front end completely using React View and Next.js. (00:10:49) What do you know? (00:10:50) Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash Lex. (00:10:56) That's all lowercase. (00:10:57) Go to shopify.com slash Lex to take your business to the next level today. (00:11:04) This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. (00:11:06) To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. (00:11:09) And now, dear friends, here's Pavel Durov. (00:11:29) You've been an advocate for freedom for many years, writing that you should be ready to risk everything for freedom. (00:11:36) What were some influences and insights that helped you arrive at this value of human freedom? (00:11:44) I get to experience the difference between a society with freedom and a society without freedom pretty early in life. (00:11:51) 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, (00:12:06) of ideas, of goods and services. (00:12:09) Even for a four or five-year-old kid, it was obvious. (00:12:12) You can't experience all the toys, the ice cream of sorts, the cartoons in the Soviet Union that you can access in Italy. (00:12:23) And then I got to realize something even more important. (00:12:26) You don't get to contribute to this abundance without freedom. (00:12:32) And at this point, (00:12:34) it was pretty obvious to me. (00:12:36) You also wrote, Soboda Vazhnye Djeniek translates to Freedom matters more than money. (00:12:42) How do you prevent these values for freedom being corrupted by money, by people with influence, by people with power? (00:12:52) Well, the biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed. (00:12:56) So you make sure that they don't stand in your way. (00:13:00) If you imagine the worst thing that can (00:13:03) happen to you and then make yourself be comfortable with it. (00:13:08) There's nothing more left to be afraid of. (00:13:12) 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. (00:13:27) than a longer life, but lived in slavery. (00:13:30) Do you contemplate your mortality? (00:13:32) Anything about your death? (00:13:34) Oh, yes. (00:13:35) Are you afraid of it? (00:13:37) In a way, you have to go against your instinct of self-preservation. (00:13:42) And it's not easy. (00:13:44) We are all biological beings, hard-coded to be afraid of death. (00:13:49) Nobody wants to die. (00:13:51) But when you approach it rationally, you live and then you die. (00:13:55) There's no such thing as (00:13:57) your death in your life. (00:13:59) You stop experiencing life once you die. (00:14:02) So you have to ask yourself this question. (00:14:04) Is it worth living a life full of fear of death? (00:14:09) Or it's much more enjoyable to forget about this and live your life in a way that makes you immune to this fear? (00:14:19) At the same time remembering that death exists so that every day would count. (00:14:25) Yeah, remembering that death exists makes you deeply feel every moment that you do get. (00:14:33) That's why I love reminding myself that I can die any day. (00:14:37) In many ways, you live a pretty stoic existence. (00:14:40) I got a chance to spend a couple of weeks with you. (00:14:44) In many ways, you seek to minimize the negative effects of the outside world on your mind. (00:14:51) You've written, quote, if you want to reach your full potential and maintain clarity of mind, stay away from addictive substances. (00:14:59) My success and health are the result of 20 plus years of complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal drugs. (00:15:10) Short-term pleasure isn't worth your future. (00:15:13) Let's talk about each one of these. (00:15:15) Alcohol, what's been your philosophy behind that? (00:15:20) That one is quite easy. (00:15:21) When I was 11 years old, my biochemistry teacher, he gave me this book he wrote. (00:15:28) It was called The Illusion of Paradise. (00:15:31) And there he would describe the biological and chemical processes that happen in your body once you consume this or that substance. (00:15:43) It was mainly related to (00:15:47) illegal drugs, but alcohol was one of these addictive substances that he covered. (00:15:52) So it turns out that when you drink alcohol, the thing that happens is that your brain cells become paralyzed. (00:16:02) They become literally zombies. (00:16:05) And then next day, sometime after the party is over, some of your brain cells die and never get to normal. (00:16:15) So think about this. (00:16:16) 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? (00:16:27) This sounds ridiculous. (00:16:28) Yeah, in many ways, it's a poison we'll let in our body. (00:16:31) But by way of advice, what advice would you give to people who consider not drinking? (00:16:36) A lot of people use alcohol to enable them to have a vibrant social life. (00:16:44) There's a lot of pressures from society, at a party, to drink so you can socialize. (00:16:51) So what advice would you give to them, to people who imagine having a social life without alcohol? (00:17:00) Well, first of all, don't be afraid to be contrarian. (00:17:02) Set your own rules. (00:17:05) Secondly, if you (00:17:07) feel you need to drink, there must be some problem you're trying to conceal. (00:17:12) There's something that, some fear you're not ready to confront. (00:17:18) And you have to address this fear. (00:17:21) 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. (00:17:30) It's pretty banal, but this advice works. (00:17:33) Fix the underlying problem. (00:17:35) which is usually at the very bottom is always going to be fear. (00:17:38) Work on that. (00:17:40) And very often people are trying to escape something in their lives with alcohol. (00:17:44) What is it they're trying to escape? (00:17:47) What is this problem? (00:17:49) You have to get to the bottom of it. (00:17:51) Your mind is trying to tell you something valuable. (00:17:56) And instead of addressing it directly, you are flooding it in alcohol. (00:18:03) which is sort of a spiritual painkiller, but works only temporarily. (00:18:09) And then you have to pay the debt with interest. (00:18:13) So what do you do? (00:18:14) I mean, you've been in a lot of gatherings, a lot of parties. (00:18:18) Is there some challenges to saying no? (00:18:21) For me, not at all. (00:18:22) I've been always ready to stand my ground and say no when I feel something's not right. (00:18:30) And it's extraordinary how easily (00:18:34) we humans are affected by what we perceive as majority. (00:18:38) Because nobody since ancient times, since million years ago, wants to be left out by the tribe. (00:18:47) We are scared that we won't become accepted anymore, which thousands of millions of years ago meant we're going to starve to death. (00:19:01) 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 and many activities the majority is engaging in are not bringing you any good. (00:19:25) So that's another fear you have to face, going into a party and (00:19:29) 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. (00:19:39) That's a fear. (00:19:40) That's a fear. (00:19:41) And it's quite irrational if you think about it. (00:19:44) was something that made a lot of sense 20,000 years ago. (00:19:50) It makes zero sense today. (00:19:53) Because if you think about it, if you (00:19:55) Do the same thing everybody else around you is doing. (00:19:58) You don't have any competitive advantage. (00:20:01) And you don't get to become outstanding at some point in your life. (00:20:07) 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. (00:20:17) Differently. (00:20:18) And perhaps, I think you said you want to achieve mastery at a niche. (00:20:23) So find a niche at which you can pursue with all your effort and achieve mastery. (00:20:29) And the niche being different than anything that anybody else is doing. (00:20:34) Can you explain that a little bit more? (00:20:36) So obviously in order to contribute to the society you're in, to the economy of the country you live in, (00:20:46) You have to do something that is valuable. (00:20:49) But if you're doing something that everybody else is doing anyway, what's the value of it? (00:20:56) 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. (00:21:10) At the same time, there are so many areas which you can explore. (00:21:14) that have nothing to do with the information you receive on a daily basis. (00:21:19) 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. (00:21:40) so that you end up consuming the same information, the same stuff, the same memes, the same news as everybody else. (00:21:47) But rather you should be proactive. (00:21:49) 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 (00:22:09) number one expert in this field. (00:22:12) And it's not quite, it's not that difficult to do that. (00:22:17) You have to just remain consistent because nobody else is trying to do that. (00:22:21) Everybody else is just reading the same news and discussing the same news every day. (00:22:28) But this way they don't get to have a competitive advantage. (00:22:31) Yeah, majority of the population become slaves to the AI recommender systems. (00:22:37) AI-driven recommender systems. (00:22:38) And so the content everybody's fed is the same thing and we all become the same. (00:22:42) On that point, one of the different things you do is you don't use a phone, except occasionally to test telegram features. (00:22:51) But I've been with you for two weeks. (00:22:53) I haven't seen you use a phone at all in the way that most people use a phone, like for their social media. (00:22:59) So can you describe your philosophy behind that? (00:23:02) I don't think a phone is a necessary device. (00:23:06) I remember growing up, I didn't have a mobile phone. (00:23:10) When I was a student at the university, I didn't have a mobile phone. (00:23:15) When I finally got to use a mobile phone, I never used phone calls. (00:23:20) I was always in airplane mode or mute. (00:23:25) I hated the idea of being disturbed. (00:23:30) My philosophy here is pretty simple. (00:23:35) I want to define what is important in my life. (00:23:43) I don't want other people or companies, all kinds of organizations telling me what is important today and what I should be thinking about. (00:23:57) To set up your own agenda and the phone gets in your way. (00:24:02) It provides distractions. (00:24:04) It guides what you should be looking at, what you will be looking at. (00:24:08) So you don't want that. (00:24:09) You want to quiet the mind. (00:24:12) You want to choose what kind of stuff you let inside your mind. (00:24:17) 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. (00:24:25) How often do you find quiet time to just think and focus deeply on work without any distractions? (00:24:32) You mentioned to me that you value quiet mornings. (00:24:35) Yes. (00:24:36) So the thing I'm trying to do, I try to allocate as much time as possible for sleep. (00:24:43) Now, even if I allocate, say, 11 or 12 hours for sleep, I won't sleep for 11 or 12 hours. (00:24:50) So what I end up doing is I end up lying in bed thinking. (00:24:56) And some people hate it. (00:24:57) They say, you have to take a sleeping pill, but I never take pills. (00:25:02) I love these moments. (00:25:04) 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. (00:25:17) That's my favorite time of the day. (00:25:18) Sometimes I go, I wake up, I go take a shower, still without a phone. (00:25:26) Beautiful ideas can come to you while you're doing your morning exercise. (00:25:31) your morning routine without a phone. (00:25:34) 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. (00:25:46) Same is true in a way if you've been consuming news from social media late at night. (00:25:54) But then how do you define what is important and what you really want to become in life? (00:26:01) 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. (00:26:13) 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. (00:26:25) I know it's kind of 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. (00:26:36) And you're supposed to be really connected. (00:26:41) But the conclusion you reach very early is that the more connected and accessible you are, the less productive you are. (00:26:51) And then how can you run this thing (00:26:53) 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. (00:27:05) You know, the entire world can be fascinated by a fight, a quarrel between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man. (00:27:15) But for the vast majority of these people following this saga, it's irrelevant. (00:27:22) It won't change their lives. (00:27:24) And in any case, they can't affect it. (00:27:28) So it's a bit pointless. (00:27:29) Of course, there are people who are engaged in activities that require them to be up to date of everything that's going on. (00:27:40) But 99% of people aren't. (00:27:41) Yeah. (00:27:43) The internet, social media presents to us drama. (00:27:48) in such a way that we think it's the biggest thing in the world, the most important thing in which the tides of history will turn. (00:27:54) But in reality, most things will not turn the tides of history. (00:27:59) And so I guess our challenge is to figure out what is the timeless thing. (00:28:03) What is the thing that's happening today that's still going to be true in 10, 20 years? (00:28:09) And from that, decide what you're going to do. (00:28:12) And that's very difficult on social media because everybody's outraged. (00:28:16) the news of the day, whatever the quarrel is, that's the thing that's, everyone thinks the world will end because of this thing. (00:28:24) And then another thing happens the next day. (00:28:27) And they're trying to influence your emotions. (00:28:30) Yeah. (00:28:30) And that's how you get into trouble, because you can be forced to make conclusions that are not in your best interest. (00:28:39) I've seen you be, once again, quite stoic about your emotions. (00:28:43) You ever get angry? (00:28:44) You ever get, (00:28:46) lonely, you ever get sad, the roller coaster of human emotion. (00:28:50) And what do you do with that when you make difficult decisions? (00:28:53) I'm a human being like everybody else. (00:28:55) I do get to experience emotions. (00:28:57) Some of them are not very pleasant. (00:29:00) But I believe that it's the responsibility of every one of us to cope with these emotions and to learn to work through them. (00:29:13) 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? (00:29:31) I normally never have depression. (00:29:32) I don't remember having depression in the last 20 years at least, maybe when I was a teenager. (00:29:39) But one of the reasons for that is (00:29:43) I start doing things. (00:29:47) I identify the problem. (00:29:50) I can see a solution and I start executing the strategy. (00:29:57) If you are stuck in this loop of being worried about something, nothing's ever going to change. (00:30:06) And people often make this mistake thinking, oh, I should just (00:30:10) have some rest and then regain energy. (00:30:14) This is not how it works. (00:30:16) You gain energy by doing something. (00:30:19) So you start doing something, then it happens. (00:30:22) You feel motivated, you feel inspired. (00:30:26) And then ultimately you do something else, a little bit more, a little bit more. (00:30:31) And in a few years, who knows, you may end up achieving great things. (00:30:34) Yeah, that's the thing that people really confuse. (00:30:36) If you're stuck (00:30:38) In a depressive cycle, even when you really, really, really, really don't want to do anything, just do something. (00:30:47) Try, to make progress. (00:30:49) Because the good feeling comes in the end of that. (00:30:51) The whole point is to do first and then feel, not feel and then do. (00:30:55) Exactly. (00:30:56) And going to the gym is a good example. (00:30:59) There are many days when you don't want to start working out. (00:31:03) But you have to overcome this initial reluctance. (00:31:08) And then you get to a point that you enjoy it and you think, my God, it was such a good idea to come to the gym today. (00:31:16) But it's similar to pretty much every activity. (00:31:21) You get to write some code, write a small piece of code first, and then you get inspired. (00:31:28) Then you'll come up with more ideas. (00:31:31) You need to write a novel, just write a paragraph. (00:31:35) This is pretty obvious and (00:31:38) It's not a secret. (00:31:39) 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. (00:31:53) And this is one of them. (00:31:54) We've been working out every single day. (00:31:58) You have been working out for many years pretty intensively. (00:32:03) So I think a lot of people would love to (00:32:06) No, what's your perfect daily workout regimen? (00:32:10) Let's say on a daily, on a weekly basis. (00:32:13) I do 300 push-ups and 300 squats every morning. (00:32:16) And in addition to that, I go to the gym normally 5-6 times a week, spending between one and two hours every day. (00:32:26) So push-ups and squats are still a big part of your routine. (00:32:29) Yes, this is how I start my day. (00:32:32) I'm not sure they do a lot in terms of (00:32:35) changing your body, but they're definitely a good way to practice self-discipline. (00:32:42) Because you don't want to do these push-ups in the morning most of the days. (00:32:47) Squats are particularly boring. (00:32:49) They're not that hard. (00:32:50) They're just boring. (00:32:53) But you overcome it, and then it's much easier to start doing other things related to your work, for example. (00:33:05) When I can, I also take an ice bath because it's another exercise of self-discipline. (00:33:10) I think the main muscle you can exercise is this muscle, the muscle of self-discipline. (00:33:17) Not your biceps or your pecs or anything else. (00:33:22) Because if you get to train that one, everything else just comes. (00:33:29) by itself. (00:33:30) And everything else becomes easy. (00:33:31) We should mention, I went with you to Bagna, and I think it's fair to say you're nuts in terms of how much you can handle. (00:33:43) And I didn't even see the worst of it. (00:33:45) Can you just speak to your crazy escapades in the Bagna, what value you get from it? (00:33:51) So both the heat and the cold. (00:33:53) I don't know if it's crazy. (00:33:55) I think it's quite... (00:33:56) natural and normal by this time. (00:33:59) But maybe I could just get used to it. (00:34:01) So Banya is this extreme kind of sauna practiced by Eastern Europeans. (00:34:11) But it is done in a way that maximizes heat. (00:34:17) And they also use all kind of herbs and branches, and it's a much more holistic and natural experience. (00:34:26) Then a necessary part of it is you get the cold plunge. (00:34:33) And then you go back. (00:34:34) And again, this is one of those things that maybe in the moment is not always that pleasant, particularly if you go to extreme temperatures. (00:34:45) You don't feel great. (00:34:46) I don't always feel great. (00:34:48) But this feeling is passing. (00:34:50) It's only a few minutes. (00:34:53) Same with the ice bath. (00:34:55) You have to suffer a bit, and then you get to feel great for hours and days after. (00:35:05) What's more, it gives you these long-term health benefits. (00:35:08) In a way, you can look at it as alcohol in reverse. (00:35:14) Alcohol will give you this short, fleeting pleasure for an hour, for a couple of hours, but then you will be paying for it. (00:35:25) with long-term negative consequences. (00:35:29) I'd rather do Bania in ice bath. (00:35:31) We swam the length of a large lake in France a couple times. (00:35:34) Can you talk through why you value these multi-hour swims? (00:35:39) I left swimming for hours. (00:35:42) The longest I swam was 5 1/2 hours in Finland. (00:35:47) It was quite cold. (00:35:50) I got lost in the process. (00:35:52) Barely could find my way back. (00:35:55) But the reason I do it, yes, you feel great after. (00:36:00) You're shaking a little bit. (00:36:02) You feel great after. (00:36:03) You cross a huge lake and I cross many lakes. (00:36:06) Geneva Lake, Zurich Lake. (00:36:09) And every time you feel this achievement, which makes you happy, makes you feel strong, and then you're more ready to other challenges. (00:36:22) And of course, when you know you're going to start a journey that will last a few hours, you're reluctant to do it. (00:36:32) But you swim for 10 minutes and then for 20 minutes and then for 30 minutes. (00:36:39) And it teaches you this incredible patience that I think is necessary if you want to achieve anything in life. (00:36:46) And it's pretty meditative, lake versus ocean. (00:36:49) Yes, and you don't have to (00:36:52) go too fast. (00:36:53) You can be slow and enjoy the moment. (00:36:56) Until you get lost and it's 5 1/2 hours. (00:36:58) Did you panic like if you're going to be able to find the shore, find your way out? (00:37:02) Not really. (00:37:02) I'm a reasonably stress resilient person. (00:37:06) I didn't panic at that moment. (00:37:08) And there were worse swims I had that were shorter but involved accidents and you know about some of them. (00:37:16) So that wasn't the worst by far. (00:37:19) But an important thing about swimming (00:37:21) and physical activity in general is that it makes your mind clear and your thinking process is becoming more efficient. (00:37:33) 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. (00:37:45) So how can you make this go faster? (00:37:47) Or how do you make your lungs more efficient? (00:37:50) How do you make your heart more efficient in doing that? (00:37:55) Physical activity is the only way I know of. (00:37:59) So it's not just staying healthy or trying to look good. (00:38:06) It's also being productive. (00:38:13) It's also being stress resilient. (00:38:16) All of these qualities are necessary if you want to run a large company, if you want to start a company. (00:38:24) I'm surprised when I started doing this more than 10 years ago that more CEOs didn't engage in sports. (00:38:36) 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 were strong, (00:38:47) you must be not very smart and vice versa, which is a complete lunacy. (00:38:54) Very often these two things go together. (00:38:56) 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 an engineer, as a technologist. (00:39:05) Oh, yes. (00:39:07) When I can't train, I can instantly feel that stress is (00:39:15) creeping on me. (00:39:19) So even in situations where I'm constrained, I can't go to the gym. (00:39:24) I would just keep doing push-ups. (00:39:25) I just keep doing squats. (00:39:28) Yeah. (00:39:29) I mean, that's the cool thing about body weight exercise. (00:39:32) You could just do it anywhere. (00:39:35) You could just pop off 50, 100 push-ups before a meeting. (00:39:38) I don't, don't you feel weird when you (00:39:41) have a day without physical activity. (00:39:43) Yeah. (00:39:44) If I go a day without doing push-ups at the very minimum, that's a shitty day. (00:39:50) And if you can do pull-ups, it's even better. (00:39:52) Yeah. (00:39:53) I gotta ask you about your diet too. (00:39:55) No processed sugar, no fast food, no soda, intermittent fasting sometimes once. (00:40:00) a day only, sometimes a couple times a day. (00:40:03) So take me through your philosophy on the no sugar, no soda, just clean food. (00:40:10) Well, sugar is pretty easy because it's addictive. (00:40:14) The more you consume sugar, the more you want it, the hungrier you get. (00:40:19) So if you want to stay efficient and healthy, why consume processed sugar? (00:40:27) You'll just end up snacking all the time. (00:40:30) Intermittent fasting, so eating only within six hours and not eating for 18 hours every day, also brings structure into your day and into your eating habits. (00:40:49) 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. (00:41:00) I read a few books on longevity. (00:41:02) I think something everybody agrees on is that sugar is harmful. (00:41:10) No, I'm not militant about sugar. (00:41:12) Like you can eat berries, fruit, if you feel your body needs it. (00:41:18) But it's not true to think it's necessary to consume sweet things. (00:41:26) not for children, not for adults. (00:41:30) Red meat, I stopped eating it about 20 years ago because I just felt heavy every time I had it. (00:41:37) So I guess it's individual. (00:41:39) It's my metabolism, my digestive system isn't agreeing with this kind of food. (00:41:48) So I normally eat seafood of all kinds and vegetables. (00:41:54) This is (00:41:56) the basic source of calories for me. (00:41:59) Yeah, and like all things, you said short-term pleasure isn't worth your future. (00:42:04) 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. (00:42:16) So I guess it all boils down to just discipline. (00:42:18) Yes, and trying to identify the real cause of an issue you're experiencing. (00:42:26) If you're experiencing a headache, one solution would be to take a pill and then the headache disappears. (00:42:37) What this pill would actually do in most cases, it would mute the consequence, your feeling of pain. (00:42:45) It's a painkiller. (00:42:48) It will not eliminate the root cause. (00:42:50) So you have to ask yourself, what is it that is causing this headache? (00:42:56) Do I need to drink some water? (00:42:59) Is the air quality here bad? (00:43:02) Do I need to start getting more sleep? (00:43:04) Is there something wrong with people around me? (00:43:07) They're stressing me out. (00:43:09) There must be some reason why you're experiencing a headache. (00:43:13) But if you take a pill, you're not removing this reason. (00:43:17) You're actually making it worse. (00:43:20) Because this... (00:43:22) harmful factor is still there. (00:43:25) It's like you're piloting a helicopter and there's some red signals and red lamps starts to blink and it starts producing bad, unpleasant noise. (00:43:37) What would you do? (00:43:37) You would try to figure out the cause and eliminate it. (00:43:41) Maybe there is some mountain next to you and you have to avoid it. (00:43:46) Or you take a hammer and smash the signal. (00:43:51) I think the good answer is quite obvious. (00:43:52) So why are we constantly doing this regardless? (00:43:56) 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. (00:44:04) So it's incredibly important to analyze yourself and try to get to the bottom of things. (00:44:11) So you generally try to avoid all pills, all pharmaceutical products. (00:44:15) Yes, I've been staying away from all of that since (00:44:20) I became an adult. (00:44:21) When you're a teenager, your mom would typically say, we need to take this pill, otherwise the world collapses. (00:44:30) Once I became a grown-up, I said, no, I don't think that the producers of pill are incentivized in the right way. (00:44:40) They're not really interested in eliminating the root of the problem. (00:44:46) They would rather have me (00:44:48) dependent on the pills they're producing so that I could buy them forever. (00:44:57) And then I also realized, no, I'm not saying that you should never take pills. (00:45:02) There are obviously some diseases that you can only fight with antibiotics, for example. (00:45:12) So I'm not suggesting we go back to the Middle Ages. (00:45:18) But what I'm saying is we overuse pills. (00:45:21) Yeah, it's always good to 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. (00:45:32) And big pharma is certainly one of them. (00:45:34) Pharmaceutical companies have a huge incentive to keep the problem going versus solving the problem. (00:45:40) It's wise. (00:45:41) This is something I practice every day. (00:45:44) I read some piece of news. (00:45:46) and I ask myself, Who benefits from me reading this? (00:45:53) 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, (00:46:16) Donate some money. (00:46:17) Let's do something that would benefit other people. (00:46:20) 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. (00:46:36) And that takes us back to the original thing we started talking about, which is freedom. (00:46:40) One of the ways to achieve freedom of thought is to remove (00:46:44) your mind from the influences, the forces that manipulate you. (00:46:51) That's really important to realize. (00:46:53) 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. (00:47:04) Be very proactive in understanding what the biases, what the incentives are, so you can think clearly, independently, and objectively. (00:47:13) And again, it ties back with restraint from alcohol. (00:47:19) Because if your mind is clouded, how can you analyze yourself? (00:47:25) You'll always be dependent on opinions of others. (00:47:31) You will always follow the mainstream. (00:47:34) And then whatever the authorities or whoever in charge will tell you, you'll believe it. (00:47:42) because you don't have a tool of your own to rely on to come to your own conclusions. (00:47:49) I have to ask you, this is something that came up. (00:47:53) You don't watch porn. (00:47:55) I don't think I've heard you talk about this before. (00:47:57) What's the philosophy behind not watching porn? (00:48:00) You know, there's a lot of people that talk about 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 (00:48:11) get into relationships and all that kind of stuff. (00:48:14) So what's your philosophy in not consuming porn? (00:48:17) 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. (00:48:29) If anything, it just forces you to exchange some energy, some inspiration, (00:48:40) to a fleeting moment of pleasure. (00:48:43) Doesn't make sense. (00:48:44) And in any case, as I said, it's not the real thing. (00:48:49) So as long as you can access the real thing, you don't need to watch porn. (00:48:56) But then if you can't access the real thing, you shouldn't watch porn as well, because it means there's some deficiency in your life, some problem that you have to overcome. (00:49:07) Yeah, analyze the underlying cause. (00:49:12) And again, this goes back to the theme of investing in a long-term flourishing versus short-term pleasure. (00:49:22) There's a theme to the way you approach life. (00:49:25) I try to be strategic. (00:49:27) I try to act under assumption that I'm not going to die in one hour from now, and I'm going to stick around for a bit, despite the fact that we are all mortal. (00:49:38) So why would I (00:49:40) It's changed the mid and long term for the short term. (00:49:43) Doesn't make any sense. (00:49:45) Quick pause, bathroom break. (00:49:47) Yeah, let's take a break. (00:49:47) All right, we took a break and now we're back. (00:49:51) I got to ask you about Telegram, the company. (00:49:53) I got to meet some of the brilliant engineers that work there. (00:49:56) Telegram runs lean relative to other technology companies that achieve the skill that Telegram does. (00:50:03) It has very few employees. (00:50:04) So how many people are on the core team? (00:50:09) Let's say the core engineering team. (00:50:11) The core engineering team is about 40 people. (00:50:16) This includes back-end, front-end, designers, system administrators. (00:50:25) Can you speak to the philosophy behind running a company with so few employees? (00:50:32) Well, what we realized really early is that (00:50:36) quantity of employees doesn't translate the quality of the product they produce. (00:50:42) In many cases, it's the opposite. (00:50:46) 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. (00:51:04) The other problem with having too many employees is that some of them won't get enough work to do. (00:51:12) And if they don't get enough work to do, they demotivate everybody else by their mere existence. (00:51:19) They're still there, they're still getting the salary, but they don't do anything. (00:51:24) And if they don't do anything, more often than not, they will start trying to find their purpose elsewhere. (00:51:34) maybe inside your team, but not by doing productive work, but by finding problems that don't exist within the team. (00:51:45) And that can disrupt the team and the mood inside it even further. (00:51:54) Also, when you intentionally don't allow some of your team members to hire more people to help them, (00:52:05) they will be forced to automate things. (00:52:08) In our case, we have 10s of thousands of servers around the world, almost 100,000, distributed across several continents and data centers. (00:52:24) If you try to manage this system manually without automation, (00:52:32) you will probably end up hiring thousands of people, 10s of thousands of people. (00:52:36) 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, much more efficient, and interestingly, much more reliable as well. (00:52:53) And more resilient to the changing geopolitics, to the changing technology, all of that. (00:53:00) Because if you automate (00:53:02) the distributed aspect of the data storage and all the compute, and that's going to be resilient to everything the world throws at you. (00:53:11) I suppose if you have people managing all of it, becomes stale quickly. (00:53:16) Yes, humans are attack vectors. (00:53:20) And if you have a distributed system that runs itself automatically, you have a chance (00:53:29) at increasing the security of speed and speed of your service. (00:53:33) This is what we did with Telegram, 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. (00:53:48) Yeah, one of the big ways to protect user privacy is that you store the data (00:53:55) The infrastructure side of Telegram is distributed across many legal jurisdictions with the decryption keys. (00:54:04) So it's encrypted in the cloud. (00:54:05) The decryption keys are split and kept in different locations so that no single government or entity can access the data. (00:54:15) Can you explain the strength of this approach? (00:54:17) The way we designed Telegram is (00:54:23) We never wanted to have any humans, any employees have any access to private messaging data. (00:54:34) That's why since 2012, when we've been trying to come up with this design, we've always invested a lot of effort into making sure that nobody can mess with it. (00:54:48) Like if you hire an employee or any of the existing employee, (00:54:53) They can't break the system in the way that would allow them to access messages of users. (00:54:59) And then, of course, we launched an encrypted messaging that is even more protected, but it has certain limitations, so you still have to rely on encrypted cloud. (00:55:10) So an interesting engineering. (00:55:13) challenge was how you make sure that no point of failure can be created within your team or outside. (00:55:21) So no employee can even access user messages. (00:55:24) So that's the thing. (00:55:25) You know, we're talking about encryption, we talk about privacy, we talk about security, all these kinds of things. (00:55:29) I think the number one thing that people are concerned about, which there's also misinformation, is about private messages. (00:55:37) So Telegram is very (00:55:41) very protective of the private messages of users. (00:55:45) So you're saying employees never can access the private messages. (00:55:52) Have any governments or intelligence agencies ever accessed private user messages in the past? (00:56:00) No, never. (00:56:02) Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, including governments and intelligence services. (00:56:10) If you try to access any server in any of the data center locations, it's all encrypted. (00:56:18) You can extract all the hard drives and analyze it, but you won't get anything. (00:56:26) It's all encrypted in the way that is undecipherable. (00:56:31) That was very important for us. (00:56:33) That's why we can say with confidence there hasn't been ever (00:56:42) a leakage of data, any leak of data from Telegram, not in terms of private messages, not in terms of, say, contact lists. (00:56:51) Do you see in the future a possible scenario where you might share user private messages with governments or with intelligence agencies? (00:57:02) No. (00:57:04) We design a system in a way that's impossible. (00:57:07) It will require us to change the system and we (00:57:10) won't do that because we made a promise to our users. (00:57:14) We would rather shut Telegram down in a certain country than do that. (00:57:19) So that's like one of the principles you operate under, is you're going to protect user privacy. (00:57:25) I think it's fundamental. (00:57:27) Without the right to privacy, (00:57:29) people can't feel fully free and protected. (00:57:33) I mean, this is a good place to ask. (00:57:36) I'm sure you're pressured by all kinds of people, all kinds of organizations to share private data. (00:57:42) Where do you find the strength and the fearlessness to say no to everybody, including powerful intelligence agencies, including powerful governments, influential, powerful people? (00:57:56) I guess part of it is just me being me. (00:57:59) I stood up for myself and for my values since I was a little kid. (00:58:07) I always had issues with my teachers because I would point out their mistakes during classes. (00:58:14) And at the end of the day, what's important is to remind yourself that you have nothing to lose. (00:58:22) They can think they blackmail you with something, they can threaten you with something, but what is it they really (00:58:29) can really do to you. (00:58:31) Like worst case, they can kill you. (00:58:33) But that brings us back to the first part of our discussion. (00:58:38) There's no point living your life in fear. (00:58:43) 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. (00:58:55) It won't affect me, it won't affect my lifestyle in any way. (00:58:58) I will still be doing my push-ups, So, 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. (00:59:17) go ahead and do that. (00:59:19) We'll just quit this market. (00:59:21) We won't operate there. (00:59:22) It's not that important. (00:59:23) They all think that somehow we profit from their citizens. (00:59:28) And the only goal tech companies have is extracting revenues. (00:59:34) And it's true, most tech companies lie like this. (00:59:38) But there are projects like Telegram, which are a bit different. (00:59:42) And I'm not sure they realize that. (00:59:45) So for you, the value of maintaining your integrity in relation to your principles is more important than anything else. (00:59:54) And of course, we should say that you also have full ability and control to do just that because you, Paolo Durov, own 100% of Telegram. (01:00:04) So there's no other, anybody with a say on this question. (01:00:10) There are no shareholders, which is quite unique. (01:00:13) Very unique. (01:00:14) I don't think there's anything even close to that in any major tech company. (01:00:18) 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. (01:00:35) I think the right to privacy is included in the constitution of most countries, at least most Western countries. (01:00:43) but it's still under attack almost every week. (01:00:48) And it often starts with well-meaning proposals. (01:00:53) Oh, we have to fight crime. (01:00:54) We have to do that. (01:00:56) We have to protect the children. (01:00:58) But at the end of the day, the result is the same. (01:01:01) People lose their right to such fundamental thing as privacy. (01:01:04) They sometimes lose their right to express themselves, to assemble. (01:01:09) 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 autocratic. (01:01:20) 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. (01:01:32) They all justified it. (01:01:35) with very reasonable sounding justifications. (01:01:39) And then it came in stages gradually. (01:01:43) And after a few years, people would find themselves in a position when they're helpless. (01:01:48) They can't protest. (01:01:51) Every message they send is monitored. (01:01:55) They can't assemble. (01:01:59) It's over. (01:02:01) 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. (01:02:11) In the context, in the geopolitical context that you're mentioning that governments, when they become autocratic naturally, it's the way of the world, human nature, and the nature of governments, they become more censorious. (01:02:24) They begin to censor, and always justifying it, in their minds, perhaps assuming that they're doing good. (01:02:31) Perhaps some of them assume they're doing good, but interestingly, it always results in the state accumulating more power at the expense of the individual. (01:02:44) And then where does it stop? (01:02:49) You know, we humans are not very good at finding the right balance, and in this case, the right balance between chaos and order. (01:02:59) between freedom and structure. (01:03:02) We tend to go to extremes. (01:03:06) I think you still consider yourself a libertarian. (01:03:09) There is something about government that always, over time, naturally builds a larger and larger bureaucracy. (01:03:18) And in that machine of bureaucracy, it accumulates more and more power. (01:03:23) And it's not always that some one individual member of that bureaucracy. (01:03:30) is the one that corrupts the initial principles on which the government was founded. (01:03:33) But just something over time you forget. (01:03:36) You begin to censor, you begin to limit the freedoms of the individual, the ability of the individuals to speak, to have a voice, to vote. (01:03:48) It just gradually happens that way. (01:03:51) And the government is not some abstract notion. (01:03:54) The government consists of people. (01:03:57) and these people have goals, they would naturally be inclined to increase their level of influence, to have more subordinates, to have more resources. (01:04:10) And that's how you end up in an endless loop of ever-increasing taxes, ever-increasing regulation, which ultimately just suffocates (01:04:26) free market, free enterprise, and free speech. (01:04:29) So you do want to have very, very strict limitations on the extent the government can increase its powers at the expense of citizens. (01:04:42) Ironically, you don't have those limitations. (01:04:44) You're supposed, in all countries, which are considered to be free. (01:04:52) It's supposed to be the constitution that protects everybody. (01:04:56) But interestingly, it doesn't work always this way. (01:04:59) They are able to find very tricky phrasings in order to carve out exceptions. (01:05:09) And then the exception becomes the rule. (01:05:11) 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. (01:05:20) I think I should say that (01:05:22) It's one of the worst overreaches of power I've seen as applied to a tech leader in recent history, in all history. (01:05:35) So it's tragic, but I think speaks to the thing that we've been talking about. (01:05:40) So maybe can you tell the full saga what happened? (01:05:44) You arrive in France. (01:05:46) I arrived in France last year in August, just for a short two-day trip. (01:05:53) And then I see a dozen of armed policemen greeting me and asking me to follow them. (01:06:03) They read me a list of something like 15 serious crimes that I'm accused of, which was mind-boggling. (01:06:18) At first I thought there must be some mistake. (01:06:22) Then I realized they're being serious and they're accusing me of all possible crimes that the users of Telegram have allegedly committed or some users. (01:06:36) And they think I should be responsible for this. (01:06:40) Which again, like you said, it's nothing. (01:06:42) It's something that never happened in the history of this planet. (01:06:47) No country, not even in... (01:06:50) authoritarian one did that to any tech leader, at least at this scale. (01:07:00) 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. (01:07:12) So they put me in a police car (01:07:18) And I found myself in police custody. (01:07:24) A small room, no windows. (01:07:30) Just a narrow bed made of concrete. (01:07:35) I spent four days, almost four days there. (01:07:39) In the process, I had to answer some questions of the policemen. (01:07:45) They were interested in (01:07:49) 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 (01:08:16) encryption works, how social media work. (01:08:20) 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. (01:08:32) It's like a boy, I mean, it reminds me, I'm a huge fan of Franz Kafka, and he's written about the absurdity of these kinds of situations. (01:08:40) Hence the Kafka-esque stories. (01:08:42) 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. (01:08:55) That nobody, fascinatingly in that story, neither the person arrested nor any individual member of the system itself fully understand what is happening. (01:09:07) Nobody can truly answer the questions (01:09:10) And eventually the person, spoiler alert, is mentally broken by the whole system, which is what bureaucracy can do in its most absurd forms. (01:09:19) It breaks the spirit, the human spirit, laden in all of us. (01:09:25) That's the negative side of bureaucracy. (01:09:27) I agree with you on the absurdity of this thing. (01:09:34) Because if this was a good faith attempt, (01:09:38) to fix an issue. (01:09:41) 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 these problems, including with Telegram, and we did it dozens of times. (01:10:05) Yeah, you have a nice page showing, this is kind of like details that most people don't really think about. (01:10:13) But Telegram is at the forefront of moderating CSAM and terrorist groups. (01:10:22) There's a nice page, telegram.org slash moderation that shows just the incredible amount of groups and channels that are (01:10:30) engaged in terrorist activity and CSAM activity that are blocked, actively blocked, found and blocked by Telegram. (01:10:37) So, and a lot of this work, like you said, because of the automation is done with machine learning. (01:10:42) Just the scale is insane. (01:10:44) This is stuff that most like noobs like me who are just chatting it up on Telegram don't think about. (01:10:49) But there's just like an immense number of people essentially doing things that violate the law. (01:10:58) on there and you have to find them immediately and catch it. (01:11:01) I guess all platforms have to deal with it. (01:11:03) And Telegram was doing a great job of dealing with that kind of content. (01:11:08) And what you're saying is the French government had no idea. (01:11:12) Do they even know what machine learning is? (01:11:16) 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. (01:11:24) That's my hope. (01:11:26) In any case, you're right. (01:11:27) I mean, if you look at Telegram, we've been fighting harmful content that is publicly distributed on our platform since 10 years ago. (01:11:40) Actually, since the time we launched public channels on Telegram. (01:11:45) And since something like eight years ago, we had daily transparency reports on how many (01:11:56) channels related to child abuse or terrorist propaganda, we're taking down daily. (01:12:03) Every day we've taken, maybe, we'll take down hundreds of them. (01:12:12) 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. (01:12:25) hundreds of thousands every day. (01:12:28) And then somebody would read the newspaper, get enraged because they would 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. (01:12:53) but based on emotions driven from inaccurate input. (01:12:58) Yeah, I think we should make pretty clear that there's no world, no reason that the French government should have arrested you. (01:13:04) But here we are. (01:13:04) That's the situation you're in. (01:13:06) So to be clear, you have to show up in front of a judge. (01:13:10) All of this is beautifully absurd. (01:13:12) It would be hilarious if it wasn't extremely serious. (01:13:15) You have to show up in front of a judge every certain amount of time. (01:13:21) And what is that experience like? (01:13:24) In France, they have this role of investigative judge. (01:13:27) I don't think you have it in many other places in the world. (01:13:30) It means I'm not on trial. (01:13:33) I'm being investigated. (01:13:36) And in France, it's not just the police or prosecutor asking me questions. (01:13:41) It's a judge, which in my experience is more like still a prosecutor, but it's called a judge. (01:13:50) And that makes it harder to appeal. (01:13:54) So if you're limited in, say, countries where you can travel, then to appeal that restriction will take you a lot of time. (01:14:03) The investigation itself should have never been started. (01:14:07) It's an absurd and harmful way of solving an issue such as complicated as (01:14:21) regulating social media. (01:14:24) It's just the wrong tool. (01:14:26) So we objected and appealed the investigation itself. (01:14:34) We did last year, I believe. (01:14:36) We are still not even given a hearing date for the appeal because the process is painfully slow. (01:14:49) not just for me, but for everybody, which made me realize the system may be broken in many levels. (01:14:57) You have other entrepreneurs affected by the French tester system telling me horror stories about their experiences, where businesses got paralyzed by very (01:15:17) unnecessary actions of investigative judges that ended up being unjustified and biased. (01:15:24) 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. (01:15:41) So this is the only thing that is, I hope, different. (01:15:46) and will be different in this case compared to the story you told from Kafka. (01:15:53) I mean, but it does, as Kafka describes, break a lot of people with time. (01:15:58) So when do you hope, we should say that you were for a long time not allowed to travel out of France. (01:16:04) Now you can travel to Dubai. (01:16:07) We're now in Dubai, got to meet many of the people that work at Telegram. (01:16:13) Telegram is headquartered in Dubai. (01:16:15) But you're not allowed to travel anywhere else. (01:16:18) When do you think you're coming to Texas to hang out with me over there? (01:16:23) That's a hard question to answer because it doesn't depend on just my actions. (01:16:30) I can just say this. (01:16:33) I am patient. (01:16:36) I will not let this limitation on my freedom (01:16:45) dictate my actions. (01:16:50) 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 or when you're just stuck, unable to (01:17:15) 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. (01:17:26) So I have no crystal ball that would tell me the future. (01:17:30) I can't say that I am pessimistic. (01:17:33) I think we've been able to gradually remove most of the restrictions initially imposed on my freedom. (01:17:44) last August. (01:17:46) If the French government or the French Intelligence Agency want to have a backdoor or a way to access private user messages, what would you say to them? (01:17:59) Is there anything they can do to get access to the private user messages? (01:18:05) Nothing. (01:18:07) My response would be very clear. (01:18:12) But it won't be very polite, so I'm not sure. (01:18:16) It's good to say here. (01:18:17) It's good to say because you're wearing a tie. (01:18:20) Yeah, it's a serious adult, gentleman-like program. (01:18:24) 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. (01:18:35) And then of course, other places (01:18:38) use that as propaganda to try to attack you. (01:18:40) get attacked by basically every nation. (01:18:43) So it's a difficult medium in which to operate. (01:18:47) It's difficult to be you, fighting for freedom, fighting to preserve people's privacy. (01:18:51) 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? (01:19:04) I think the French government is losing this battle. (01:19:08) This battle is wrong. (01:19:11) The more pressure I get, the more resilient and defined I become. (01:19:22) 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. (01:19:37) in other countries, blocking certain channels, changing the way telegram works. (01:19:44) And not only I refused, I told the world about it. (01:19:49) And I'm going to keep telling the world about every instance, any government, in this case, in particular the French government,