Killer App

The thrilling story of the enigmatic billionaire Pavel Durov - known as Russia's 'Mark Zuckerberg' - and his controversial social media platform, Telegram.

'A wonderful exposé. Killer App tells the story of how Telegram and its founder Pavel Durov shaped our dark, modern times . . . riveting'
LUKE HARDING, author of Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest

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AUGUST 2024. A private jet touches down outside Paris. Pavel Durov disembarks, but the police are waiting. He is arrested. It is the first time a social media founder and tech titan has been detained due to posts made by users on their platform.

Telegram is one of the world's most popular social networks, boasting over one billion users. Its low-moderation, privacy-focused ethos has made it an ideal platform for organising social movements - but it also facilitates extremists, violent terrorists and disinformation networks.

Having avoided attempts by governments around the world to curtail suspected illegal activity on the platform, Telegram's Russian founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested for alleged complicity with organised crime, drug trafficking and the distribution of child sex abuse material - charges he denies. Durov and his team had long approached the matter of content moderation with a laissez-faire and libertarian philosophy. Now a fierce debate had emerged: could a CEO really be held liable for what was said and done on their platform?

Based on years of reporting and intimate access to his employees, friends and associates, Killer App tells the exhilarating story of how Pavel Durov launched a social media platform that changed the world. Tracing Telegram's opaque operations and finances - and the governments and spy agencies that tried to rein it in - it asks one of the biggest questions of our time: what kind of internet, and what kind of world, do we really want?