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“Independence, privacy, freedom”
A source close to the case expressed surprise that Durov had flown to France with a warrant for his arrest. “Maybe he had a feeling he could get away with it,” the source said.
Le Bourget Airport is now used by private aircraft instead of regular commercial flights. Le Bourget Airport is also famous for being the site of the defection of Russian ballerina Rudolf Nureyev to the West in 1961.
Telegram is a Dubai-based encrypted messaging app that positions itself as an alternative to U.S. platforms that have been criticized for commercial exploitation of user data.
Telegram promises to never reveal its user.
Durov said in a rare interview with right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson in April that he came up with the idea for the encrypted messaging app after pressure from the Russian government while working at VK.
He said he then tried settling in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before settling on Dubai, which he admired for its business environment and “neutrality”.
People “like independence. They also like privacy and freedom, (there are many reasons) for people to switch to Telegram,” Durov told Carlson.
He said at the time that the platform had more than 900 million active users.
As Western countries put pressure on large platforms to remove illegal content, Telegram is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, thereby exempting itself from censorship laws.
Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, leading to accusations that it makes it easier to spread false information and allows users to spread neo-Nazi, pedophile, conspiracy and terrorist content.
Rival WhatsApp imposed restrictions on message forwarding worldwide in 2019 after being accused of spreading false information and sparking lynchings in India.
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