Telegram CEO Durov Upholds Platform’s Free Speech Ethics Amid Meta Controversy
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RDA Gulf Correspondent - . January 9, 2025
- . Update: January 9, 2025 2:10 am
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram posted through on Wednesday that ” I’m proud that Telegram has supported freedom of speech.” The businessman was reportedly responding to recent news of significant policy changes made by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.
I’m proud that Telegram has supported freedom of speech long before it became politically safe to do so. Our values don’t depend on US electoral cycles.
— Pavel Durov (@durov) January 8, 2025
Today, other platforms are announcing they’ll now have less censorship. But the real test of their newly discovered values…
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta announced on Tuesday that his business would discontinue its contentious third-party fact-checking program in the United States. He acknowledged that because these services “shut out people with different ideas,” they caused more harm than good. He added that one of the events that led to the policy shift was Donald Trump’s win in the November presidential election. Zuckerberg pledged to lessen censorship and referred to the recent US elections as a “tipping point” for giving freedom of speech priority.
“It’s easy to say you support something when you risk nothing,” Durov wrote in his Telegram post the next day adding that some “platforms are announcing they’ll now have less censorship.” He did not cite Meta by name in his post though. Those making such changes only now would face a “real test of their newly discovered values” when “the political winds change again,” the Telegram CEO predicted adding that his company’s values “don’t depend on US electoral cycles.”
