Pavel Durov: the world will not be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic

Pavel Durov, the Creator of the social network Vkontakte and the Telegram messenger, said that the world can expect a “civilizational shift passing through generations” after the coronavirus pandemic. He wrote about this in his Telegram channel.

The entrepreneur called the spread of the coronavirus “a threat to our entire species.” “When the pandemic ends, the world will not return to normal. It depends on us whether the new world will be a better place than the one that we leave behind,” wrote he.

Durov believes that isolation is a chance for everyone to create a “better version of themselves”, as well as for technology to prove its value.

The messenger’s founder said that this month Telegram verified and started promoting 17 channels of the Ministries of Health in different countries of the world. He also noted that Telegram is not a company that can be considered to cooperate with government agencies, but in this particular case, an exception was made to help governments spread information about coronavirus. The list of channels supported by Messenger also includes the official channel of the Russian operational headquarters for fighting the virus.

In addition to this, Telegram will later present a project that eases the problem of learning during self-isolation, Durov added. He promised to reveal more information about the project in the next few days.

In January, Durov spoke about why using the WhatsApp messenger is dangerous. He noted that users prefer to save backup copies of their conversations on cloud storage when changing their devices, which are not encrypted. Also, the source of danger can be backdoors (secret vulnerabilities intentionally built by developers).