I'm Turning 41, but I Don't Feel Like Celebrating

The difference is that what once was covert in the West is now out in the open. Anonymity enabled the troll culture, famously exploited by any and all bad faith actors in their favor. Control in terms of surveillance on metadata level is just a manner of having enough endpoints at your disposal for a nation state actor.

It was a nice illusion and the wake up is kind of harsh.

He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism from European democracies - this must be stopped immediately:

> Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures such as digital IDs (UK), online age checks (Australia), and mass scanning of private messages (EU).

> 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.

The Russian internet is far more controlled than the Western internet, with penalties up to and including arrest and death for expressing the wrong views. Russia also is actively invading Europe and sponsoring vast network of troll accounts which poison the discourse on the internet in Western countries.

This does not make his argument incorrect but it is worth keeping the context in mind before getting too cynical about western systems. That cynicism is one the explicit goals of Russian propaganda.

Durov himself lives in an unfree country

But I think it’s hypocritical to talk about freedom of speech issues in Western Europe while ignoring similar or worse restrictions in China, Russia, or Dubai, where he lives.

It’s similar to Musk’s approach — when Twitter is shut down in Brazil, it’s a freedom of speech violation, but having a Tesla factory in China suddenly makes that problem disappear there.

Bull. Shit. If you break the existing laws, by insulting or slandering someone, you might have to face the consequences.

But I guess it is easy to point the finger at Germany and conjure the specter of the fascists if you live in Dubai, come from Russia, and created 2 of the biggest troll-mills ever. Would not want to rattle the cage too much, would we.

https://youtu.be/qjPH9njnaVU?si=_pkEi-SDML08AASJ

Was fully nodding along, and this confused me. What is that supposed to mean?

Who?? What's he talking about?

Pavel Durov's ancestors include a Red Army soldier who helped pave the way for Soviet control of Eastern Europe. While the content of his message about losing privacy has merit, the appeal to "tradition" and "forefathers" seems like he's speaking to a particular kind of audience.

You're the billionaire owner of Telegram. If you cared about these things you'd sell and invest in open standards or making our current standards suck less or be easier to use.

Cry me a river.

When the Microcomputers came, and everyone ignored mainframes, they decided to step back, and let everyone have their foolishness. It was far easier for their jobs if the let operating systems that trusted everything take over the market. The Soviets copied our moves, and made themselves vulnerable. They figured they would retain the institutional knowledge and wisdom, keeping their own internal systems secure by design.

But they didn't plan on retirements and changes of administration, and the end of the cold war. Once that shock happened, they didn't reconsider. They didn't reconsider again when the world became networked, and connectivity for almost everything became persistent. There were multiple points at which they could have changed course, quietly pushed systems that were secure by design, but they apparently haven't.

So now we're in a world where you can't trust anything newer than an IBM XT with dual floppy drives. Where firmware can be updated with persistent worms, making it permanently untrustworthy. Into this world, we all carry spying devices in our pockets and purses, that can be repurposed by any intelligence agency, or sufficiently motivated person for that matter, into tools of oppression.

I think that a sufficient shock might pull us back into rationality, and cause us to seek sane computing strategies we can trust, but I don't give that good odds at present, 5% or less.

We don't have privacy, and you'd have to be an old fool to actually speak your mind these days. We're falling right into the thing we feared the most when I was a kid, a repressive Soviet style oligarchy where you can't trust anyone. You especially can't trust any computing devices.

Except they are not. Googling I came across about five, mostly calling for asylum seekers accommodation to be burned down. Arson was actually disapproved of even before twitter.

Durov's home country is murdering thousands in Ukraine though in the hope they they'll bend the knee to the invaders. I think that sort of stuff is more a threat to freedom.

https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-stru...

There is plenty of evidence -- anyone who saays otherwise tell me and i will provide it unless hn bans me yet again for attempting to spread the truth.

for germany -- look up CJ Hopkins. free speech is a farce in europe and has been for decades.

Why?

Normies.

They were 'played' in C19 time - and they will be 'played' next time ... and EVERY next time.

There are just too many IGNORANT people out there that trust TV.