According to Bloomberg, Durov is worth an estimated $9.15 billion and owns a series of passports and residences. For a decade, he has traveled the world with the "incredibility of Mark Zuckerberg," the "weird lifestyle of Jack Dorsey" and the "free-spirited personality of Elon Musk."
He has an obsession with pronatalism and fatherhood. Durov said in July that he had fathered more than 100 children through sperm donations over the past 15 years.
Now, Durov's legal troubles are rekindling an old debate between Telegram's end-to-end encryption policy and the security concerns of many countries and the European Union's campaign to rein in big tech companies.
Durov delivers a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in 2016. Photo: Reuters
Math and programming prodigy
Durov was born in the Soviet Union in 1984 but moved to Italy when he was four years old. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Durov's father received a job offer at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. The family later moved back to Russia.
Durov and his brother Nikolai were mathematical prodigies from an early age. Nikolai solved cubic equations live on Italian TV as a child and won several gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad, while Durov was the best student in his school and competed in local competitions.
“We are both very passionate about programming and design,” Durov said.
When the family returned to Russia, they brought an IBM PC XT back from Italy, he said, meaning they were "in the early 90s, one of the few families in Russia who could actually teach themselves how to program."
"Russian Zuckerberg"
Durov's programming skills and entrepreneurial spirit led him to create the social network Vkontakte (VK) in 2006, when he was just 21 years old and a recent university graduate. VK quickly became known as the Facebook of Russia, and Durov was dubbed the "Mark Zuckerberg of Russia."
After refusing to shut down opposition group pages on the VK social network, the businessman later resigned as CEO, sold all his shares for millions of dollars and left Russia in 2014. Today, the VK social network is under state control.
"My goal was never to become rich, but to become free. To the extent possible, my mission in life is to help others become free. I don't want to take orders from anyone," Durov said.
"The most secure messaging platform"
While Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp to build the social media empire now known as Meta, Durov chose to build his own messaging app despite the market for such platforms being overcrowded.
“It doesn’t matter how many messaging apps there are if they’re all bad,” Durov told TechCrunch in 2015. He didn’t think any of the messaging apps out there were good enough.
According to Durov, Telegram is simply the most secure messaging platform on the market. Telegram’s end-to-end encryption and strong commitment to privacy have attracted hundreds of millions of users, including the terrorists who planned the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015.
The issue of Telegram being abused by money launderers, drug dealers and pedophiles continues to concern Western countries. Durov’s detention in France is linked to Telegram’s lack of moderation.
Telegram responded that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owners are responsible for platform abuse.” The statement added that Telegram complies with European Union law and Durov has nothing to hide.
Hoai Phuong (according to CNN)
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/ceo-durov-cua-telegram-su-ket-hop-giua-zuckerberg-va-musk-than-dong-toan-hoc-va-co-toi-100-con-post309436.html
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