Telegram founder says X becoming 'more pro-freedom of speech' after acquisition by Musk

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said in an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson that social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, is becoming "more pro-freedom of speech" after it was bought by US billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.

"I'm not an expert in the US politics. But to be fair, you have, now, Twitter or X. Yeah. That, seemingly becoming more pro-freedom of speech. And I think it is, it's, it's, it's it's a great development. And back to our earlier discussion about how all of this is developing in cycles. Things are starting to change, it seems ... We will love the fact that Elon bought Twitter. We thought it was a great development for a number of reasons," Durov said on Tuesday.

He questioned whether it is "good for humanity that, like, Elon is spending so much time on Twitter making it better," but said it is "definitely good for the social media industry." Durov also praised the work X is doing to bring innovations to the platform and the changes it makes.

Durov also recalled that Telegram receives "too much attention" from countries' security agencies, including the FBI, and said that "the largest pressure towards Telegram is not coming from governments" but is "coming from Apple and Google."

"So when it comes to freedom of speech, those two platforms, they could basically censor whatever is you can read access on your smartphone ... That's what they make very clear that if we fail to comply with their guidelines. So they call it, Telegram could be removed from the stores," he said.

He added that "Apple and Google are not very compromising when it comes to that guideline" and that "if they believe some content is against the rules, they will see to it that all the apps that are distributed to their stores comply with this rules."

Musk bought then-Twitter for an estimated $44 billion in October 2022. Twitter Corporation ceased to exist as a separate company as a result of its merger with X Corp. in April 2022. In late July, Twitter’s logo was changed from a blue bird to a black-and-white X logo. Musk specified that the new logo symbolized "the imperfections in us all that make us unique."