It has been ten years since Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of the most popular Russian-language social network VKontakte (VK), which is modeled on Facebook, announced on April 16, 2014 that he had said “no” to the FSB, thereby rejecting the Russian secret service’s demand to hand over the personal data of the organizers of the Ukrainian revolutionary Euromaidan groups.

“Passing on personal data of Ukrainians to the Russian authorities would not only have been illegal, it would also have been a betrayal of all the millions of Ukrainians who trust us,” he wrote. He acknowledged that his decision would cost him control of his company – he was forced to sell his stake in VK.

His second post, two hours later, read: “On March 13, 2014, the prosecutor’s office asked me to close Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption group. I did not close this group in December 2011 and I certainly will not close it now. In recent weeks, I have been under pressure from various sides. We managed to squeeze out over a month, but it is time to make the following clear: neither I nor my team will engage in political censorship… Freedom of information is an inalienable right in post-industrial society.”

Five days later, Durov was fired as CEO. Shortly thereafter, he left Russia and never returned.

Thus, Durov, then a 29-year-old IT entrepreneur from Saint Petersburg, lost his first child, the social network Vkontakte and his homeland. He later took French citizenship.

He maintained his vision that Internet technologies could be a global and successful challenge to traditional national systems of control. And he maintained his reputation – most Russians admired his courage and his stance against the FSB. He also maintained control of a new project that his team had been working on for some time – the Telegram messenger.

Telegram proved more creative than other messengers when it gave its users the ability to run the channels – news feeds managed by users. In countries where press freedom was under attack by governments, these channels became a replacement for news agencies, though not entirely – the most popular channels were filled with half-news, half-gossip, in some cases from well-known and trusted sources, but also from anonymous sources posing as insiders.

In Russia, both sides have taken advantage of this new Telegram feature: pro-Kremlin bloggers used Telegram channels to spread propaganda and disinformation, while independent journalists and activists used Telegram to circumvent censorship.

The messenger system enjoyed great popularity worldwide, especially in countries with poor internet connections and authoritarian regimes, where it became a competitor to Facebook Messenger WhatsApp.

This brought Durov into conflict with a growing number of governments: Russia banned Telegram for two years in 2018, while Iran blocked the app during protests in 2017 and 2018. Western governments were also angered by Telegram’s increasing popularity among terror groups and criminals of all kinds. The service has been accused of aiding money launderers, terrorists, extreme pornographers and child abusers.

Durov maintained his public stance on privacy, but secretly negotiated deals with governments that led to the lifting of bans without disclosing the terms.

For example, we’re not entirely sure why the Kremlin lifted the ban on the messenger service in 2020. The Kremlin said Durov not only had to ban “extremist content” but also hand over Telegram’s encryption keys, which would allow authorities to read private conversations. Telegram was unblocked in June 2020. Did Durov make some kind of deal with the FSB? We don’t know.

Following the Kremlin’s unprecedented and existential offensive against independent media on the eve of the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, most Russian journalists and opposition figures switched to Telegram, along with YouTube. Durov made no effort to block it, nor did he lift a finger about the growing presence of pro-Kremlin bloggers on the app.

When the full-scale war in Ukraine began, we launched a Telegram channel for our website Agentura.ru. The website was blocked by the Kremlin, but the channel was not. This story was repeated by many independent Russian media outlets, now in exile.

At the same time, the war gave pro-war bloggers a boost and a huge following, helping to mobilize public support for the war and crowdfund for the Russian military.

Durov then found himself under fire from all sides: The Kremlin called on him to block anything it disliked, and Russian liberals criticized Telegram for providing a platform for warmongers. Human rights activists, meanwhile, warned anti-war activists against using Telegram as a messenger because it was unclear whether the authorities had access to the system.

The unfiltered mix of users, including two warring armies, reflects exactly Durov’s idea of ​​freedom of speech. Anyone can have their say on social media, and there should be no control by any government.

His quasi-anarchist stance recalls the ideology of the early hacker movement of the 1980s, but is no longer a viable strategy today as governments around the world crack down on the free-access online movement. This bureaucratic counteroffensive was efficient and successful.

First, authorities recognized that even the most ambitious global platforms have people behind them; and people can be pressured. In 2016, for example, Brazilian authorities temporarily detained Diego J. Dzodan, Facebook’s vice president for Latin America, because WhatsApp had refused to share the messages of suspected drug traffickers.

Next, the notion that the tycoons of big tech companies were too important for even authoritarian states to take on was quietly abandoned when Jack Ma, a prominent Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder, fell out with the authorities in 2020. His company’s stock market listing was suspended and Ma disappeared from public view, later resurfacing in Japan as a visiting professor at Tokyo College.

Looking back, Durov lived a fairytale life in exile in Dubai. The tech attitudes of 2014 seem hopelessly outdated ten years later. Governments from the US to Europe and far beyond are increasingly enacting regulations on social media, from Facebook to TikTok.

No one – except perhaps the tech titans themselves – can really argue against the evidence that uncontrolled social media can cause great harm. The days of unmoderated social media are long gone.

How exactly this happens is a question that needs to be debated. But at the other end of the spectrum, the nation-state has the ability to arrest those who refuse to cooperate. For example, the French decided to require Telegram to cooperate with the country’s law enforcement agencies. Other tools are also available – in 2020, India banned a total of 59 Chinese apps.

But is government coercion the only way to enforce the rules?

Users are constantly presented with a choice – either dangerously chaotic social media or government control. But perhaps there are other options.

Social media is an essential part of our social fabric and our society, through non-governmental organizations, parliaments and parliamentary hearings, is perfectly capable of creating control mechanisms that do not include arresting corporate CEOs for lack of moderation.

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are non-resident senior fellows at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). They are Russian investigative journalists and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a Russian intelligence watchdog.

Europe’s edge is CEPA’s online journal covering major foreign policy issues in Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of the institutions he represents or of the Center for European Policy Analysis.