[@lexfridman] Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature | Lex Fridman Podcast #482

Link: https://youtu.be/qjPH9njnaVU

Short Summary

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, discusses his life fighting for freedom of speech and protecting user privacy, highlighting the principles that guide his decisions and the challenges he faces from governments. He shares his stoic lifestyle and disciplined habits, emphasizing the importance of freedom, self-discipline, and critical thinking to avoid manipulation in a world driven by algorithms and incentives. The conversation covers diverse topics, including technology, entrepreneurship, health, philosophy, and the human condition, showcasing Durov's dedication to his values and vision for a free and open communication platform.

Key Quotes

Okay, here are 5 direct quotes from the transcript of the Lex Fridman Podcast with Pavel Durov that I found particularly valuable:

1. "Well, the biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed. So you make sure that they don't stand in your way. If you imagine the worst thing that can happen to you, and then make yourself be comfortable with it, there's nothing more left to be afraid of. So you stand your ground, and you remember that it's worth living your life according to the principles that you believe in, even though this life can end up being shorter than a longer life, but lived in slavery."
2. "So think about this. If your brain is this most valuable tool you have in your journey to success and happiness, why would you destroy this tool for short-term pleasure? This sounds ridiculous."
3. "We have to consciously fight this inclination to be agreeable with everything that the majority imposes on you, because it's quite clear that many things that the majority... in many activities the majority is engaging in are not bringing you any good."
4. "If you are stuck in this loop of being worried about something, nothing's ever going to change. And people often make this mistake, thinking, "Oh, I should just have some rest and then regain energy." This is not how it works. You gain energy by doing something. So if you start doing something, then it happens. You feel motivated, you feel inspired, and then ultimately you do something else, a little bit more, a little bit more, and in a few years, who knows, you may end up achieving great things."
5. "Humans are attack vectors. And if you have a distributed system that runs itself automatically, you have a a chance at increasing the security and speed of your service. and speed of your service. This is what we did with Telegram, while also making it much more reliable. Because if some part of the network goes down, can still switch to the other parts of it."

Detailed Summary

Okay, here's a detailed summary of the YouTube video transcript, presented in bullet points, covering the key topics, arguments, and information discussed.

I. Introduction (Lex Fridman)

• Pavel Durov is the founder and CEO of Telegram, a messaging platform with over 1 billion users.
• Durov is described as a staunch advocate for freedom of speech and a protector of user privacy, facing pressure from powerful entities.
• Fridman describes Durov as principled and fearless.
• Fridman confirms Durov's disciplined lifestyle: no alcohol, stoic mindset, strict diet, exercise (pull-ups, pushups), minimal phone use (mainly for testing Telegram features).
• The podcast covers philosophical topics like freedom, life, and human nature, as well as technical aspects of Telegram.
• Telegram is innovative with a small engineering team.
• The conversation will cover Durov's experiences, including a Kafkaesque situation in France, and his philosophy on technology, freedom, and the human condition.
• The podcast will be available in multiple languages (Russian, Ukrainian, French, Hindi) with captions and voiceover.

II. Defining Freedom and Principles

• Early Influences: Durov's early exposure to both the Soviet Union (lack of freedom) and Italy (freedom) shaped his appreciation for freedom. He saw the contrast in access to opinions, ideas, goods, and services.
• Freedom vs. Money: Durov believes freedom matters more than money.
• Enemies of Freedom: Fear and greed are the biggest threats to freedom. Overcoming fear (imagining the worst and accepting it) is crucial.
• Worth Living According to Principles: A life lived in accordance with one's principles, even if shorter, is preferable to a longer life lived in slavery.
• Contemplation of Mortality: Durov contemplates his mortality and doesn't fear death. He views death as a reminder to make every day count.
• Rational Approach to Death: Death is inevitable and happens after you stop experiencing life.
• Importance of Death: Durov reminds himself that he can die any day.

III. Disciplined Lifestyle and Habits

• Stoicism: Durov seeks to minimize negative influences on his mind and maintains a stoic existence.
• Abstinence: He has abstained from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal drugs for over 20 years. He prioritizes long-term health and success over short-term pleasure.
• Alcohol Philosophy: Alcohol paralyzes brain cells, some of which die. He asks why destroy your most valuable tool (your brain) for short-term pleasure.
• Advice for Not Drinking:
  • Be contrarian; set your own rules.
  • Address the underlying problem causing the need to drink (often fear or a problem you are trying to escape).
  • Get rid of fear, approach people, practice, do it again and again.
• Addressing Underlying Problems: Alcohol is a "spiritual painkiller" that only works temporarily and requires interest. Address the problem instead of escaping.
• Standing His Ground: Durov has no issue saying "no" to things he feels are wrong.
• Overcoming the Fear of Being Different: Fight the inclination to agree with the majority, especially when it's detrimental.
• Niche Mastery: To contribute meaningfully, find a niche where you can achieve mastery, something different from what everyone else is doing.
• Curation of Information: Curate information sources to avoid being controlled by AI-driven algorithmic feeds and consuming the same content as everyone else. Be proactive in seeking information relevant to your chosen field.
• Phone Use: Durov minimizes phone use. He dislikes being disturbed and prefers setting his own agenda.
• Quiet Time: He values quiet mornings for deep thinking and idea generation, avoiding digital devices to control what enters his mind.
• Avoiding Digital Devices: Durov avoids digital devices for as many hours as possible in the morning to have quiet thinking time.
• Being Connected vs. Productive: The more connected you are, the less productive you are.
• Ignoring Irrelevant Drama: He ignores irrelevant drama like quarrels between the world's richest and most powerful men. Focus on the things that will change your life or that you can affect.

IV. Managing Emotions and Building Self-Discipline

• Dealing with Emotions: Durov experiences emotions (anger, loneliness, sadness) but believes in taking responsibility for coping with them.
• Importance of Self-Discipline: Self-discipline is key to overcoming negative thought loops and avoiding depression.
• Taking Action: Identify the problem, find a solution, and start executing the strategy. Action creates energy and motivation.
• The Importance of Doing: Just do something, try to make progress, because the good feeling comes in the end of it. The whole point is to do first and then feel, not feel and then do.
• Self-Discipline through Exercise: Overcoming reluctance to start exercising builds self-discipline.
• Perfect Daily Workout Routine: 300 push-ups and 300 squats every morning, plus gym sessions 5-6 times a week (1-2 hours).
• Value of Push-ups and Squats: Practice self-discipline, even though they are boring or difficult.
• Ice Baths: Another exercise in self-discipline.
• Swimming: Multi-hour swims are meditative, promote patience, and create a feeling of achievement.
• Stress Resiliency: Swimming promotes stress resiliency.
• Efficient Brain: Physical activity clears the mind and improves brain efficiency by improving circulation of sugar and oxygen through blood to the brain.

V. Diet and Avoiding Harmful Substances

• Diet Philosophy: No processed sugar, no fast food, no soda, intermittent fasting.
• No Sugar: Sugar is addictive, leads to constant snacking, and is harmful.
• Intermittent Fasting: Brings structure to eating habits and reduces sugar cravings.
• Red Meat: Stopped eating it because it made him feel heavy.
• Preferred Foods: Seafood and vegetables.
• Pills and Pharmaceuticals: Generally avoids all pills and pharmaceutical products, believing they often mask the root cause of problems.
• Analyzing Incentives: It's important to understand the incentives of industries like big pharma to avoid being manipulated.
• Analyzing News: Analyze who benefits from you reading a particular piece of news to avoid being manipulated into supporting causes that are not in your best interest.
• Pornography: Doesn't watch porn as he feels it's a substitute for the real thing. It forces you to exchange energy and inspiration for a fleeting moment of pleasure.

VI. Running Telegram: Efficiency and Privacy

• Lean Team: The core engineering team consists of about 40 people.
• Philosophy of Small Team: Quantity of employees doesn't equal quality of the product. Too many employees require excessive coordination and communication. Automation is favored over manual labor, forcing the team to develop efficient algorithms.
• Automation is Efficient, Reliable, and Resilient: Humans are attack vectors.
• Data Distribution and Encryption: Data is distributed across many legal jurisdictions with decryption keys split and kept in different locations, preventing any single government from accessing it.
• No Employee Access: No employee can access private messaging data. The system is designed to prevent it.
• Government Access: No government or intelligence agency has ever accessed private user messages.
• Future Scenario of Sharing User Data: He will never share user data. He'd rather shut Telegram down in a country than do that.
• Power to Say No: Durov finds the strength to say no to powerful entities by reminding himself that they can't really do anything to him (worst case, they can kill him).
• Integrity: Maintaining integrity in relation to his principles is more important than anything else.
• Full Control: Pavel Durov owns 100% of Telegram, giving him sole decision-making power.
• Fundamental Principles: The right to privacy is a fundamental principle often under attack.
• Telegram as a Platform for Voices: Telegram is a place for people from all walks of life to speak their minds.
• Censorship: Governments, over time, become more censorious, often justifying it as doing good.
• Libertarian View of Government: Government naturally builds a larger bureaucracy that accumulates more power, gradually limiting individual freedoms.
• Power Accumulation: Government consists of people who naturally want to increase their influence and resources.

VII. Kafkaesque Situation in France

• Arrest in France: Durov was arrested in France on bogus charges (15 serious crimes) related to the alleged actions of Telegram users.
• Lack of Understanding: He was struck by the limited understanding of technology on the part of those who initiated the investigation.
• Absurdity: The arrest was absurd, given that Telegram actively moderates harmful content (CSAM, terrorist groups).
• Transparency Report: Telegram has daily transparency reports on content removal.
• Investigative Judge: France has a investigative judge role, which Durov feels is a prosecutor with no appeal.
• Slow Process: The legal process is slow and may be broken on many levels.
• Travel Restriction: For a long time, he was not allowed to travel out of France. Now he can travel to Dubai.
• Resilience: Durov is patient and will not let the restrictions dictate his actions.
• No Backdoor: He will never give the French government a backdoor to access private user messages.
• More Pressure, More Resilient: The more pressure he gets, the more resilient and defiant he becomes.
• French Government is Losing: Durov believes that the French government is losing in that attempt.
• Romanian Election Saga: Durov was pressured by French intelligence to censor channels supporting a conservative candidate in the Romanian election. He refused.
• French Attempt to Humiliate: He considers it an attempt to humiliate himself personally and Telegram users collectively.
• Moldova Saga: Also was asked to take down channels in Moldova. Only removed content that was in violation of Telegram rules. French Intelligence commended him for doing so, implying that pressure to censor was part of the investigation against him.
• France: As a former fan of France, the recent experience simply just gigantic PR mistake for France.

VIII. Fixing France & Europe for Entrepreneurs

• Public Sector Size: Europe needs to decide on the right size of government, with public expenses in France being excessively high (58% of GDP).
• No Success Story: There has not been a major startup success in the last 10 years in France. There was one, but that was acquired, so now there is none.
• Silly Investigation: A great startup was acquired due to a "silly investigation" on data protection issues that went nowhere.
• Unnecessary Actions of Investigative Judges: Many entrepreneurs have been affected by unnecessary actions.
• Economic Growth: This has cost the French government much economic growth.
• Entrepreneurs as Enemies: The French public see Entrepreneurs as Evil Rich People, as if only the rich share would magically solve problems. In reality, lots of people are sacrificing their lives and livelihoods for it.

IX. Education and Early Life

• Rigorous Education: Attended an experimental school in St. Petersburg focusing on math and foreign languages (Latin, English, French, German).
• Diversity of Subjects: Curriculum included biochemistry, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary psychology.
• Challenging Teachers: He was kicked out of other schools for challenging authority.
• Impossible to Be a Straight-A Student: It was considered crazy to be in all subjects.
• Competition: He decided that he might as well become the best student and get an A in every subject.
• Math: Math is essential for developing logical thinking.
• Importance of Competition: Competition is really important, which is something he understood from his schooling
• Social Self-Regulations: Society self-regulates when there's competition.
• Emphasis on Removing Competition: Many countries have been emphasizing on removing competition out of their education system, so high suicide rates and unemployment is happening.

X. Brother Nikolai

• Early Learning: Learned pretty much everything from his brother, who would help him out when he had questions about the Dinosaurs and Galaxies.
• Reading: He started reading at the age of 3.
• Kind and Compassionate: Truly Intelligent people are also Kind and Compassionate.
• Very Private: Nikolai has always been a very private person.

XI. Programming Career

• Early Coding: Started coding at 10.
• Reason Started Coding: He didn't have enough video games, so he decided that he should just make them himself.
• Scarcity leads to Creativity: Having too much access can distract you.
• Turn Based Strategy Video Game: Created a turn based strategy.
• Tic Tac Toe: After being bored with the Tic Tac Toe game, he coded a game so that he would play against the computer.
• Computer Can't Win: He would code algorithms to make sure that the computer isn't able to beat him.
• Website For Students: In University, he wasn't interested in studying, so he created a website for students of his faculty first.
• Digital Answers: He was able to organize the creation of digital answers to all exams and a digitized version of all lectures.
• Scale: In a few years, he expanded to University with all of its other departments, and then to other universities.
• Russian Facebook: One of his Ex-Classmates told him about Facebook, he called him saying, "Are you trying to build a Russian Facebook? "I'm not sure. What's Facebook?"
• Simplifying: Understanding what should be removed from the code is a valuable thing to know for scaling.
• VK: As a result, he started the website called Vkontakte, or VK. It means "in touch" in Russian.
• Building From Scratch: Because he wanted to make VK as efficient as possible, he decided to build from scratch without third party modules.
• Brother Advised Him: Told to just build a module to authorize users because then you will have a clear understanding where to go from there.
• Single Employee: For the first almost a year, he was the single employee of the company. He was the backend engineer, the frontend engineer, the designer. He was the customer support officer. He was the marketing guy as well, coming up with all the wordings and the announcements, coming up with competitions to promote VK, which worked quite well.
• Efficient Project Manager: In Telegram, he also is very efficient at Project managing because he remembers what it was like.
• VK in 2 Weeks: You don't need 3 weeks to create one app when I made the first version of VK in just 2 weeks.
• Stack: He started from PHP and MYSQL, Debian Linux. Then went to Memcached. Apache servers were not enough anymore. Had to setup NGINX.
• DDoS Attack: There were also DDoS attacks.

XII. Scaling and Efficiency (VK, Telegram)

• Scaling Help: Called his Brother for help with scaling.
• Load Faster: He wanted to make it super fast so that he would require fewer servers to maintain the load.
• Rewriting Code: Rewrote a big part of the data engines in C and C++
• Load Faster: Very few websites load faster than VK.
• Facebook Visit: During Facebook visit, people were questioning how it can load faster even here in Silicon Valley.
• Prioritizing Speed: People can notice the difference even if it's just 50 millisecond difference.
• Code Efficiency: Very careful when hiring people. The codebase is very inefficient. This makes him an efficient project manager.
• Engineer Productivity: There have been occasions when firing an engineer resulted in an increase of productivity because of how inefficient it can be.

XIII. Hiring Process

• Competitions: Uses coding competitions to hire the most qualified people.
• Repetition: If not sure about hiring, repeat the contest with another task, and with winners, repeat again.
• Unique Ability: Ability to focus on one task for an extended period of time,

XIV. Feature Innovation (Telegram)

• Auto Delete Timer 7 Years ahead of any other messenger.
• Copying the Exact Timestamp: when other apps started to copy the auto delete timer like WhatsApp seven years after, they initially even copied the exact timestamps.
• Reply Design: Other designs that Telegram created (i.e vertical line on left) have been copied across other apps.
• Moving Gradient: Moving gradient in every Telegram chat. Most people don't notice it, but they can feel it.
• Delete Animation: The delete animation that they've implemented (Thanos snap effect) is just art. Its been really difficult to make.
• User Experience: You want the person that you're chatting with in Telegram to have a great and fluid experience

XV. Encryption (Telegram)

• Edward Snowden: Edward Snowden had very good points about privacy that Telegram took to heart.
• Open Source: Since Telegram has been made open source, it has been verified the app really does what it claims, it really encrypts data.
• Reproducible Builds: Reproducible builds allows to verify whether the version of the app that the user downloaded from the app store corresponds exactly to the source code that the user is viewing from Github.
• From Scratch: Telegram is done from scratch internally.
• Software Stack: All hardware and software are internally.

XVI. Edward Snowden

• Edward Snowden Revelation Not everything is what it seems. A lot of people in security were agents of NSA.
• Balance: We humans didn't get the balance right. 9/11 Created a situation when the government had to respond, and it responded, but it overreacted.
• Brave: It was incredibly brave to do what Edward did.

XVII. Facing Pressure from Governments

• Afraid: I think they should all be equally afraid of, or equally not afraid of in a way. Its not like this intelligence service can kill you, and the other can't.
• stress Resilient: Proven to be quite stress resilient.
• Refusing to Give in: From 2011 to 2014, he refused to give into governmental pressure and lead to creating Telegram.

XVIII. 2018 Russia and Iran Ban

• Test Attempts: There have been certain test attempts to partially ban Telegram.
• Access Independent Sources: It's the only platform which allows the Russian people to access independent sources of information
• Homegrown Tool: Russia is planning to migrate users from existing messaging apps to their own homegrown tool, which would, of course, be fully transparent to the government
• Alarming Trend: This Creates A Vicious Circle. It is used by authoritarian Regimes.
• Economic Growth You limit the freedom of people, you inevitably decelerate economic growth.
• Rotating IP Addresses The government started to block IP addresses, but Telegram came up with a tool to just automate and keep making new ones. This drove the Russian censor to crazy measures
• Digital Resistance With "Digital Resistance," people from all around the world helped distribute IP Addresses for Telegram to rely on to bypass censorship.
• Apple: Apple Didn't allow them to update the app in the App Store.
• Civilian Protests: People started to protest about it, flying paper planes.
• Protests from Apple Eventually Apple started getting hate for what it's doing, and changed its decision, allowing Telegram to allow downloads.

XIX. Assassination Attempt

• Poisoning There was an assassination attempt on Telegram that was done by Poisoning.
• Weird Neighbour "weird neighbor" left something around the door
• Weird After a while, it felt like the body was shutting down and he was about to die.
• Next Day Collapsed. Next day his body was super weak.
• Not Afraid It Didn't make him afraid
• Surviving it After Survived. Thought that he was living on bonus time. So in a way, he died a long time ago, and every new day you get is a gift.

XX. Pressure

• Protest Demand In 2011, the government was demanding for Telegram to take down the opposition groups.

XXI. Similarities of Durov and Elon Musk

• emotionality: Durov's emotionality is derived from the fact that he cares about issues deeply and he is willing to start as many wars and as many fights as it takes to change the world in the direction that he thinks is right.
• character feature: To be ready to be unpleasant.

XXII. Business Structure and How it Makes Money

• Owns: He owns 100% of Telegram
• Million: invested 100's of millions of his own money.
• Profit: Took a 1 dollar salary, Telegram was profitable at the beginning of 2024
• Principles: stuck to principles instead of doing advertisement based on user private data
• Leaves Money: Does Not do News Feed, leaves addictive and engagement -inducing aspect of social media
• Subscription came up with Premium Subscriptions and already has over 15 million subscribers.
• Recurring Revenue: receives more than half a billion from Premium Subscriptions alone this year, and it's growing fast.
• Innovate: You can only Make an app that is already more powerful than any other messaging app on the market. And make it even more useful so that people would be ready to pay for this extra
• Ads: They Also have ads, but they're context based, not targeted.
• Leaves money They Leave about 80% of value because they are not willing to engage in exporting personal data.
• Chain Tech - They are experimenting a lot with blockchain based technology.
• Own Identity The first app to allow people to directly own their username and their digital identities using smart contracts and NFTs, removing Telegram from the picture.
• Low Comissions: The more you have people be successful in building, the more you win.

XXIII. TON

• TON Tech: TON is a blockchain technology that has originally developed and have been launching through Telegram, because believed that blockchain is one of the technologies that enable freedom.

*SEC: However, the SEC and United States were unhappy with it and wouldn't allow it.

• TON Launched. It was launched in 2019 as an open source without any direct involvement with Durov, and they are all making revenue from it.
• Largest/Second largest: In terms of Daily NFT trading volumes.

XXIV. Bitcoin

• Bitcoin Buyer He was a bitcoin buyer.
• Doesn't care about Critics Doesn't care about all the negative reviewers, and continues to not sell.
• Should Work That's how Money should Work
• Can be Confiscated. -Nobody can confiscate your Bitcoin from you.
• Exchange -This is the ultimate means of exchange

XXV. Piki tochenie ili khui drochenie

• Russian Riddle -This is a riddle that people have to face in Russian prisons, and metaphorically, it's describing all the situations where you're presented a choice between two suboptimal options
• Solve - You just avoid all suboptimal options.
• **Take objects from Spike chair. ** -Another answer that is given to the riddle is for you to just take the sharp objects from the spike chair, to cut off all the objects of the object chair.

XXVI. Object in Oslo Freedom Interview

• Funny Bone. Large Walrus Penis bone.
• Most Respected Leaders. Gifted by a tribe called Evenki that only get gifted to the most respected leaders.
• Means nothing.: To say, it's means nothing
• Symbolically: As a Soviet Union, there was alot of Symbolic messages.

XXVII. Kids

• Sperm At one point in his life, he was a sperm doner.
• Will. Realized when making Will, has to leave money for doner children as well.

XXVIII. abundance

• Over abundance Paralysis: over abundance paralyzes motivation and willpower
• self Resitriction: Restrictions are important. I think, though, that they should be coming from within. It should be self restriction rather than restriction in order to create purpose and meaning in life.
• Lucky He was lucky in a way that his parents were poor.

XXIX. Father Advice

• Be Honest Don't tell kids one thing and do another. Don't tell them not to use the phone, and do another.
• AI - Al can have consciousness and be creative but can't have Conscience. The human spirit can.
• Don't Disappoint. One of my goals in life is never to disappoint him

XXX. Power Mind

• Influence life Belive you can infuelnce your life by thinking about it.
• ** Esoteric Realm** "We don't have any proof of that, but we also know that we probably, at this point, haven't discovered even 1% about this universe.
• High dimensional Univesre ""It is possible to imagine our world as a high dimensional universe where humans have the ability to navigate through it with the power of belief, which is coupled with positive emotion and logical thinking""

XXXI. Quantum Immortality

• Consciousness Can't Experience Death. as we branch into these many worlds, only the living consciousnesses get to experience it.

XXXII. Summary and End

• Giant thank you for fighting for the freedom of all of us to speak and creating a platform where we can do so.
• Kafka was mentioned, to be the main inspiration on everything.
• "The Trial" is the state of being accused itself, a permanent condition rather than a singular event.
• "tyranny's final victory isn't when it kills you, but when you hold still for the knife, not because you're forced, but because you've been exhausted into submission.
• "The Castle"" A similar description as "The Trial" does of the absurd inaccessibility of those in authority of the nightmarish bureaucracy.
• Kafka's work is heavy. It serves as a warning for the nightmare that civilization can become
• Kafka gave us the goal to resist against such systems that try to dehumanize us and to ensure that individual freedom and the human spirit keep flourishing