Enrique Dans

Thomas Urbain, de AFP, me envió por correo electrónico algunas preguntas sobre Telegram y su evolución desde el comienzo de la invasión rusa de Ucrania, y hoy ha publicado una noticia que ha sido reflejada en bastantes medios (Yahoo! News, AlJazeera, TechXplore, Mint, New Straits Times, etc.) en la que cita algunas de mis respuestas.

El caso de Telegram es muy interesante por lo que tiene de historia de ida y vuelta, de auténtico caso de venganza. Primero, Pavel Durov crea VK y tiene un fenomenal éxito como red social en Rusia, para encontrarse más tarde con que el régimen de Vladimir Putin lo echa de su propia compañía y toma el control de la misma. Tras exiliarse con su hermano de Rusia, renunciar a su ciudadanía y pasaporte, y pasar a vivir una vida nómada bajo un pasaporte de Saint Kitts and Nevis, creó Telegram, y ha sido capaz no solo de convertirlo en una de las apps de mensajería instantánea más populares del mundo, sino además, de hacer frente a los intentos de censura de varios países, entre otros la propia Rusia.

La realidad es que Telegram es una app que resulta muy complicado censurar, y ello ha llevado a que se encuentre en el centro de la guerra con Ucrania. Tanto ucranianos como rusos la ven como un canal con muy escasa censura, que se ha limitado a ejercer acciones como eliminar los canales de medios estatales rusos, pero que, como toda plataforma, permite recibir la información que uno decide recibir en función de las cuentas y canales que sigue. Por supuesto, esta escasa moderación implica cuestiones como que sea utilizada también para usos delictivos o que se encuentre con una prohibición en Brasil (de nuevo, con escaso éxito) debido a algo tan absurdo como no contestar a un requerimiento judicial, pero eso no evita que siga creciendo.

Como aplicación de mensajería y comunicación, Telegram no tiene la seguridad de Signal: como bien ha comentado recientemente su creador, Moxie Marlinspike, en un hilo de Twitter, la aplicación mantiene una base de datos centralizada en la nube con una copia de todos los mensajes, lo que debilita su propuesta de cifrado de extremo a extremo, que es, además, meramente opcional. Tampoco ha sido especialmente buena a la hora de definir su modelo de negocio, lo que provoca dudas sobre el éxito que podría alcanzar en una eventual salida a bolsa. Pero con todas sus limitaciones, es una app creada por dos hermanos, ex-ciudadanos rusos, que ahora juega un papel central en el conflicto de Rusia con Ucrania, lo que la convierte en una historia de venganza sin duda interesante de esas que a todos nos gustan.

A continuación, en inglés, las preguntas y respuestas que crucé con Thomas:

Q. Is Telegram now in a position to become the world’s number one messaging app with the recent boost it got from the war in Ukraine?

A. Telegram is the messaging app created by Pavel Durov after he got fired from the social networking app he created, VK, thanks to the Kremlin’s maneuvers. Now, after several years and with Pavel Durov and his brother having renounced their Russian passports and citizenship, Telegram has become the messaging app able to provide Russians with factual information about what’s going on in Ukraine, thanks to its resilience against censorship. Telegram is now a very nice revenge story, and we all love a good revenge story. Will that be enough to make Telegram the world’s favorite messaging app? That’s harder to say. The app still leaves a lot to be desired in areas such as security, encryption and its business model.

Q. How much would it be worth if it went public?

A. Messaging apps are tricky. If we go back to the origins of WhatsApp, one of its founders, Brian Acton, left a memo on the other founder’s desk, Jan Koum, saying «No ads, no games, no gimmicks». A messaging app’s user wants exactly that, messaging. The rest is unwanted, and can even be bothersome. But what happens if you don’t have ads, games and gimmicks? Obviously, the app becomes a lot more difficult to monetize (and you can ask Facebook about that). Telegram’s potential value if it goes public depends heavily on its monetization strateg,y and Durov has not been very clear on that yet.

Q. The war in Ukraine raised Telegram’s profile as a platform plagued by misinformation. Does it have an image problem? Does it limit its ad revenue potential?

A. So far, Telegram has been a very neutral platform, with very little control. There’s a permanent struggle between keeping such a neutral image and becoming more tightly controlled, and Telegram is pretty much in that moment now. There’s all types of information on Telegram, from reputable media channels, to all sorts of groups with all types of information strategies. As happens with every platform, we need to understand that it is neither good or evil, it’s a question of how we use it, the channels we decide to follow, the groups we participate in, etc.

Q. Should it do more to moderate content ?

A. Moderating content on a platform that is encrypted end-to-end is a daunting task. We all understand that, at some point, it needs to be done to comply with regulations, but the balance is extremely tricky, and in many cases depends on users themselves flagging inappropriate content, on algorithms monitoring the sharing of certain messages, etc. It’s not as easy as just making the decision to moderate, and given the scale of the operations, it cannot be done manually.

Q. How different is Telegram’s model, technologically and economically, from WhatsApp or Snapchat?

A. They are very different animals. Snapchat is a social app with lots of features, versus WhatsApp and Telegram, which are, first and foremost, messaging apps (with groups and channels, but mostly messaging apps). In the case of WhatsApp, it uses Signal’s encryption algorithm, which has an amazing reputation for being very solid, but it is also in the hands of Facebook (ooops, sorry… Meta), probably the most disastrous and irresponsible company when it comes to respecting users’ privacy. WhatsApp is part of a strategy that tries to squeeze as much information as possible out of users in order to sell it to advertisers. Telegram, on the other hand, has been growing for a long while without a business model, and it definitely doesn’t spy on users or sell their data. Depending on how they decide to define their advertising model, we will see…

Q. Why do you think Telegram can still operate in Russia ? Is it living on borrowed time there ?

A. It is very difficult to block Telegram, and in fact, Russia’s Roskomnadzor has tried several times and failed. The same Russian government that seized VK to try to control its people, is now asking Telegram for a master key to decrypt the conversations there, but obviously, Pavel Durov, after his terrible experience with VK, is saying no way. As for Russian users, Telegram has a very strong network effect, so users are willing to do many things in order to avoid losing their access to it, including using VPNs. If the government orders the app to be deleted from app stores, users can still get it through other channels. In the struggle between the Russian government and Telegram, Telegram seems to be winning so far.

This article is also available in English on my Medium page, «Telegram’s Pavel Durov finally exacts his revenge on the Kremlin«