Pavel Durov, inventor of Russian Facebook counterpart VKontakte or VK.com,, was asked to block Russian IM service Telegram, which he also engineered. This request was made under grounds that the service was being used to ease communications between IS militants to communicate prior to the Paris attacks of November 13.
His response was quite humorous to say the least.
Alexander Ageyev, State Duma Deputy, asked the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Alexander Brotnikov to ban access to Telegram on Monday, for being used by ISIS for propaganda, but his words were not heeded properly.
Communications Minister Nikolau shared that banning Telegram because it is popular members of ISIS would be the same as banning Toyota cars in Russia because they are popular among members of ISIS.
The Mocking Was Taken a Step Further by Pavel
The Russian Facebook inventor also mocked the proposal, saying that they might as well ban words, because there’s evidence that suggests that they’re being used by terrorists to communicate.
Telegram, which uses heavy encryption to enable safe messaging, is not the only app to allow this, as there are other tools such as Signal and WhatsApp that use similar technology, and they have not faced such criticism on their respective governments, so why should Telegram be blocked?
‘You Might As Well Ban Words’ – Pavel Durov on Russia's Proposal to Block Telegram: https://t.co/vzydSWCkUe
— Pavel Durov (@durov) November 16, 2015
