- Official Post
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov recently warned that a ‘dark, dystopian’ world is approaching fast. Sharing a post on microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter), Durov writes: “I’m turning 41, but I don’t feel like celebrating”. In the post, Durov argued that he did not feel like celebrating, arguing that “our generation is running out of time to save the free Internet built for us by our fathers.”Durov, who founded Telegram in 2013 as a privacy-focused messaging platform, said the original promise of the internet as a space for the free exchange of ideas was being replaced by tools of government control. He cited measures such as digital IDs in the UK, mandatory online age checks in Australia, and proposals for mass scanning of private messages in the European Union as signs of growing restrictions.“Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy,” Durov claimed in his post.He warned that these policies risked pushing the world toward a “dark, dystopian” future where freedoms would vanish. “Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms — and allowed them to be taken away,” he wrote.
Durov argued that society was being misled into believing its main goal was to “destroy everything our forefathers left us: tradition, privacy, sovereignty, the free market, and free speech.” Without a course correction, he said, the result would be “self-destruction — moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological.”Closing his message, Durov said he would not celebrate his birthday: “I’m running out of time. WE are running out of time.”
