Podbit · Lex Fridman Podcast
While stuck in France under legal restrictions, Durov was approached by the head of French foreign intelligence and explicitly asked to shut down Telegram channels supporting the conservative candidate in Romanian elections. He refused, then publicly disclosed the entire conversation — without having signed any NDA.
Where this was said
At 1:21:38 · chapter starts 1:21:23
This chapter contains the most explosive political revelation of the episode. After his arrest, Durov was approached through a mutual contact — a well-known French tech entrepreneur — by the head of French foreign intelligence, who requested a meeting. In the meeting, the intelligence chief asked Durov to shut down Telegram channels supporting the conservative candidate in Romania's presidential elections (whose results had previously been annulled). Durov refused categorically, calling it political censorship, and informed the intelligence chief that he would refuse any such request regardless of who was asking — and that he would tell the world about every attempt [1] — Pavel Durov "While stuck in France under legal restrictions, Durov was approached by the head of French foreign intelligence and explicitly asked to shu…" 1:21:38 . Crucially, he never signed an NDA. Before this encounter, there had been a similar episode involving Moldova: French intelligence had asked Telegram to remove certain channels ahead of a Moldovan election. Some of those channels genuinely violated Telegram's rules and were removed. The remainder were legitimate political expression and were kept. After the partial compliance, a French intelligence contact indicated they had spoken favorably to Durov's investigative judge about him. Durov found this deeply alarming — the suggestion that judicial treatment of his criminal investigation was being informally linked to his willingness to cooperate with political censorship requests was, in his words, a moment when he 'got much more suspicious' about what was really going on.
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