Pavel Durov

“I'm in a situation where I can determine my own future.”

“We are not willing to compromise our values in order to increase our market share.”

“Despite this ever-increasing evidence of WhatsApp being a honeypot for people that still trust Facebook in 2019, it might also be the case that WhatsApp just accidentally implements critical security vulnerabilities across all their apps every few months.”

“I realized I don't have a safe means of communications. That's how Telegram started.”

“Me myself, I'm not a big fan of the idea of countries.”

“WhatsApp doesn't only fail to protect your WhatsApp messages - this app is being consistently used as a Trojan horse to spy on your non-WhatsApp photos and messages.”

“I believe in small governments or no governments. I think the majority of people want to have big government, a big brother taking care of them.”

“This is a big debate concerning the values of the society in question: Whether the risk of a terrorist act is more important than the 100 percent right to privacy.”

“VK is famous for its competitions among third-party developers who build alternative versions of VK on its open API.”

“Obviously I do have political views - I'm a believer in the free-market economy; I also believe that without competition and respect for human rights there will be no progress because nobody will feel safe and free.”

“Looking back, there hasn't been a single day in WhatsApp's 10 year journey when this service was secure.”

“I'm a peaceful creature; I'm vegetarian. I don't like wars.”

“Some things like the layout of the early VKontakte was very influenced by Facebook. Otherwise it could take ages for me to build, and I was not a professional designer.”

“It's super-interesting to see what it's like to run the most popular social media platform in a country like Iran.”

“For WhatsApp to become a privacy-oriented service, it has to risk losing entire markets and clashing with authorities in their home country.”

“The political solutions proposed against encryption are not going to work against terrorism.”

“I have a clean conscience and ideals that I am willing to defend.”

“We don't put a dollar toward marketing or advertising. I think we're more efficient than Facebook.”

“I'm out of Russia and have no plans to go back.”

“If you have WhatsApp and your phone goes down, you don't have access to your messages. You can't send documents and it's not private.”