Telegram CEO Pavel Durov made no attempt to hide his frustration with French authorities during a wide-ranging conversation on The Lex Fridman Podcast, describing the French government’s investigation into him and his company as “Kafkaesque,” “absurd,” and deeply damaging.
He warned that efforts to undermine digital privacy are accelerating not just in France, but across Europe and beyond, using pretexts like child protection and election integrity to justify surveillance and censorship.
Throughout the interview, Durov painted a grim picture of what he sees as growing authoritarianism disguised as public safety.
“Every dictator in the world justifies taking away your rights with very reasonable-sounding justifications,” he said, warning that citizens often don’t realize the gravity of their loss until it’s too late. “Every message they send is monitored. They can’t assemble. It’s over.”
Durov flatly rejected the idea that any government, including France’s, could force Telegram to grant access to users’ private conversations.
“Nothing,” he responded when asked if there was any scenario in which French intelligence could gain a backdoor.
He emphasized that Telegram does not and will not use personal data to power ad targeting, saying, “We would never use…your personal messaging data or your context data or your metadata or your activity data to target ads.”
Despite facing legal pressure and travel restrictions stemming from the French case, Durov said Telegram remains firm in its refusal to censor political content or violate users’ privacy.
“The more pressure I get, the more resilient and defiant I become,” he said, accusing French authorities of trying to “humiliate” him and millions of Telegram users through coercive tactics.
Durov described encounters with French intelligence officials who allegedly tried to pressure him into shutting down Telegram channels during elections in Romania and Moldova, actions he said would have amounted to “political censorship.”
He recounted being approached while detained in France and asked to disable channels that criticized preferred candidates of Western-aligned governments. “If you think that, because I’m stuck here, you can tell me what to do, you are very wrong,” Durov said he told one official.
He made it clear that Telegram had only taken down content in Moldova that actually violated platform rules, refusing broader demands that lacked justification.
Following that, Durov claims the intelligence agencies used his cooperation to influence his ongoing legal case in France, feeding information to the investigating judge, an action he found “shocking” and deeply suspect.
Although the French government’s case against Telegram remains unresolved, Durov noted that he and his legal team have yet to be given a hearing date for their appeal.
He characterized the situation as a symptom of deeper dysfunction. “The investigation itself should have never been started,” he said.
“It’s an absurd and harmful way of solving an issue such as regulating social media.”
According to Durov, the French judiciary’s use of investigative judges, which he compared to prosecutors in disguise, creates procedural barriers that prevent timely appeals and fair resolution.
He pointed to similar experiences of other entrepreneurs caught in what he described as a paralyzed legal system.
Durov accused Western governments of repeating the same patterns that led to the erosion of rights in more autocratic regimes.
He warned that legislation introduced under the banner of child protection often functions as a Trojan horse for surveillance. “It often starts with well-meaning proposals… but at the end of the day, the result is the same,” he said. “People lose their right to such [a] fundamental thing as privacy.”
He also called out the response to 9/11 as a pivotal moment when governments used fear to expand surveillance powers. “The cure is worse than the disease,” he said. “It ended up eroding certain basic rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy.”
France is not alone, Durov warned. He pointed to what he sees as a creeping normalization of speech suppression across Europe under vague mandates to fight “misinformation” or “election interference.”
Once hailed as bastions of liberal democracy, these nations are now “creating precedents” that empower authoritarian states to do the same with impunity.
“It’s the norm now to restrict voices that don’t go in line with the narrative,” Durov said, warning that a global culture of silencing dissent is taking hold.
Telegram may soon be banned in Russia, Durov revealed, pointing to reports of government efforts to force citizens onto a state-controlled app called MAX.
Parts of Russia, including Dagestan, already face partial Telegram restrictions.
Durov fears this will further isolate Russians from independent news and perspectives, given that Telegram is one of the few platforms still carrying external news sources like BBC inside the country.
Shifting users to domestic tools would give governments full visibility into all communications, eliminating one of the last avenues for dissent.
“It would be a huge mistake to ban a tool like Telegram in any country,” Durov said, adding that millions rely on it not just for personal use but also for business, media access, and organizing.
Despite mounting pressure, Durov said Telegram remains financially independent and sustainable through its premium subscription model, which now includes over 15 million paying users and is projected to bring in more than $500 million this year.
He described this as proof that it’s possible to run a successful tech platform without harvesting personal data or giving in to state surveillance demands.
Telegram has also embraced blockchain technologies, eventually allowing users to own digital identities and usernames outright.
This prevents Telegram itself, or any government, from seizing user credentials. “Telegram cannot confiscate your username from you. It’s impossible,” Durov said.
Throughout the conversation, Durov repeatedly affirmed that he would rather walk away from everything than compromise Telegram’s founding principles. “If they put me into prison for 20 years… I would rather starve myself to death and die there, reboot the whole game than do something stupid,” he said.
With governments leaning more heavily on vague justifications to erode freedoms, Durov insists that now is not the time to yield.
His message to those trying to strong-arm Telegram into compliance: “Not only I refused, I told the world about it and I’m going to keep telling the world about every instance.”
