Co-founder of App used by ISIS once said, 'We Shouldn't Feel Guilty.' Even after Islamic State used his app to plan an attack that killed 129 and wounded more than 350 in Paris, the "Russian Mark Zuckerberg" remained guilt free.
Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram, was aware that terrorists were using his app to communicate. Telegram is a highly secure messaging app. Knowing that his technology is being used for violence, he still feels unaffected, the Washington Post reports.
"I think that privacy, ultimately, and our right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism," he said at a TechCrunch panel in September when asked if he "slept well at night" knowing his technology was used for violence.
"If you look at ISIS, yes, there's a war going on in the Middle East," he continued. "Ultimately, ISIS will find a way to communicate with its cells, and if any means doesn't feel secure to them, they'll [find something else]. We shouldn't feel guilty about it. We're still doing the right thing, protecting our users' privacy."
As expected, there was a call for the encrypted chat programs like Telegram to be banned as militants were said to utilize the highly secure systems to communicate. However Durov proposed banning words as posted on A social networking site VKontakte which he co-founded. He blamed "short-sighted socialists" in the French Government as much as the Islamic State militants as posted in Facebook.
In an unexpected move, Telegram issued a statement on its site last Wednesday that it banned 78 ISIS-related channels in 12 different languages.
"We were disturbed to learn that Telegram's public channels were being used by ISIS to spread their propaganda," it read. "... As a result, this week alone we blocked 78 ISIS-related channels across 12 languages."
In light on what he said just two months ago, one cannot help but detect a hint of insincerity to it. Durov will not be cracking down the encrypted chats but plans to stop the public channels which were used by Islamic State supports to distribute propaganda.
This is a major policy change done by Durov. Do you think he would totally ban ISIS accounts in private messaging as well? Let us know your thoughts on this by leaving your comments below.