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Telegram founder Durov says his 100 children will receive share of his estate
- miga 1y ago100 children? Looks like Elon is less fertile...
- Onawa 1y agoOnly 6 of the children were conceived naturally. The rest were from sperm donations. Interesting that he claims that there isn't a difference for him though in how he views his offspring.
- walterbell 1y agoReportedly he will "open-source" his DNA data to establish paternity for legal claim by each child.
- myth_drannon 1y agoWhich is silly, anyone can buy DNA test kit for 50$ and then download the result file and upload to the miriad DNA sites out there like gedmatch, myheritage so you can be easily found. That's how the families of my relative who donated sperm (anonymously) found me and now trying to figure out who the donor is and are contacting me.
- wood_spirit 1y agoI guess he means he will publish his dna. Then, all who can match that they are his children can claim.
- Balgair 1y agoAhhh, no, not in France. From what I can tell (which isn't much) Durov is living in France and seems to like it there. I'm not going to assume the people that are a product of his sperm donations are all living in France, but I will assume some are. In France paternity tests are legal, but they are highly regulated and require a court order to preform at a very small number of labs that can do it. This goes back to 1994. Even going outside that system and gaining a paternity test in another country is illegal and risks a year in prison and a 15,000 Euro fine. Not that it stops questioning husbands, but hey.
- walterbell 1y agoLived in UAE. Visited, arrested and held in France for several months. Returned to UAE. https://gizmodo.com/telegrams-founder-plans-to-open-source-his-dna-2000481509 https://gizmodo.com/telegrams-founder-plans-to-open-source-h... > 100 families in 12 different countries... still on tap at a Moscow IVF clinic
- Balgair 1y agoThanks!
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago[flagged]
- javier123454321 1y agoDonating sperm is not the same as going for cigarettes and never coming back to your family.
- yorpinn 1y agoAdditionally, the claim that these children lacked a father/adequate parenting is not in evidence. They were probably more likely than average to be born into stable two-parent households since their parents were planning to have children & evidently have access to healthcare.
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- sorcerer-mar 1y agoAh this is fair, I thought Pavel was doing similar Muskian thing of singling out women he found hot, making them sign NDAs, and keeping them in hotel rooms for the duration of their pregnancy and then ignoring those children. I didn't realize this was more of a traditional sperm donation effort. Kudos to him then!
- jollyllama 1y agoSure but GP has a point. He is going around saying he "fathered" them, that they are "his children". Sure that's true in the strict sense of the word, and it is good that he is providing for them in some respect, but it is sad to reduce fatherhood to this transactional, materialistic sense. Are those children going to think of Durov as their "real dad"?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 1y ago>He said a doctor told him that it was his “civic duty” to donate his “high quality donor material,” How very soviet of him
- pan69 1y agoOr Catholic.
- seydor 1y agosperm-donated children are not "his children" , they are somebody else's children now . he didn't even say so himself, the title added it
- demosthanos 1y ago> “They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don’t want them to tear each other apart after my death,” he said, after revealing that he recently wrote his will. I agree that it's pretty cringe to refer to all of them as his children when he's literally a sperm donor, but he definitely did call them that.
- mumbisChungo 1y agoThey're also literally his children.
- demosthanos 1y agoThat depends a lot on your definition of "children" and "father". Many people with uninvolved biological fathers would disagree with you that the guy who impregnated their mother counted as their father, especially if they were raised by another man who actually did stick around, and that's even for dads who actually impregnated the mother. Sperm donation takes this even further because he claims to have actually done it anonymously [0], meaning he's as uninvolved as he possibly could have been in the process of being a father. Many or most of these kids have real men who were actually there helping to raise them through their childhood who they refer to as "father", and it's pretty disrespectful of Durov towards those men to attempt to usurp that title on the grounds of what was supposed to be an anonymous donation. I'll grant that Durov is more likely than most sperm donors to have some of these kids actually claim him as their father, but that's in no small part because there's now a substantial amount of money tied to them identifying him as such. Cynically I wonder if that's a major motivator for him doing this, because he knows that the kids wouldn't otherwise know or care who he is. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328289
- r721 1y agoOriginal source: https://www.lepoint.fr/high-tech-internet/exclusive-pavel-durov-on-his-arrest-in-france-macron-russia-the-fbi-and-the-fight-for-telegram-19-06-2025-2592412_47.php https://www.lepoint.fr/high-tech-internet/exclusive-pavel-du...
- walterbell 1y agohttps://gizmodo.com/telegrams-founder-plans-to-open-source-his-dna-2000481509 https://gizmodo.com/telegrams-founder-plans-to-open-source-h... > fifteen years ago, a friend asked him to donate sperm at a clinic to help them because they were having trouble conceiving.. "The boss of the clinic told me that ‘high quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples.. I plan to open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily.. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it."
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- ryandvm 1y agoWhy are tech bros so... weird?
- Henchman21 1y agoBecause they see human interaction as a problem to be solved.
- foobarian 1y agoI don't know about weird, seems like a perfectly natural instinct. See e.g. Genghis Khan
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mandmandam 1y agoYour example of 'natural instincts' is... Genghis Khan?? ... This is a joke whooshing me; right?
- 1024core 1y agoOnly 100 children? Pfffft... amateur! Real pros are nearing 1000: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65429936 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65429936
- emsign 1y agoOh, so he is one of those who want a legion of Mars children to prevent apocalypse. Why are rich people so weird? He better makes all 100 aware of each other for a much simpler reason: incest prevention. Even though the chance being slim, it is possible. A dutch man was sentenced to not donate any more sperm because one company illegally used his to fertilize dozens of eggs resultingin statistically problematic number of children from one individual. So listen techbros, this is not how you "safe" humanity.
- Quarrelsome 1y ago> Why are rich people so weird? Eminem hinted at the answer. During the peak of his fame he was at a restaurant with his crew and having a great time and he was making jokes and everyone was laughing and then in a flash of clarity he realised: > of course they're laughing, every single one of these people are on my payroll. Riches have an incredibly distorting effect, especially once you cross the threshold of becoming a target. At that point you _need_ security, you _need_ to move to a gated community and you can no longer lead a normal life. The only other people you can meet who aren't trying to get into your wallet are other rich people and they're as insane as you are. You also have "fuck you" money so being nice, having other people like you isn't necessary any more. You no longer have a limiter. It gives people the opportunity to be more monstrous and I worry that much monstrosity lies dormant within us all, simply waiting for its opportunity. IMHO Hoardcurse only has two cures: put yourself at risk by forcing yourself to interact with normal people who don't owe you anything and don't know how rich you are, or give-away/spend your assets and become normally poor again, which ofc nobody ever does.
- andai 1y agoIf I'm reading this right, you're implying the only thing keeping people decent is that they have to pretend to be decent for survival purposes? Based on my framework that means the moral tragedy occurred long before the wealth and fame.
- Quarrelsome 1y agoNot entirely, its more a worry than an assertion, humanity's greatest strength is that it isn't a monolith so I'd figure YMMV. Its just when the jeering crowd point and shame others for being reprehensible, part of me wonders if all that crowd would pass that vibe-check if they'd been presented with that same opportunity. Is it morality, or is it just opportunity? Idk but I think its hard to prove either way. So, true wealth removes the limiters and the consequences that might keep some people in check. It's like how, for all the horrors that religion foisted upon us over the centuries, one of the good things it did was to encourage a general populace to attempt to better people using the threat of hell and encouraging an acknowledgement of sin.
- option 1y agoSo over 100 people who never knew him are set to get over 100M dollars upon his death. What could possibly go wrong?
- qualeed 1y agoWhat do you mean? What would go wrong and how is it relevant whether they met him or not? I wish someone gave me $100MM, that'd be great, even if I didn't know them.
- erikerikson 1y ago"There can be only one!" /s * Please be advised that the writer of this post in no way advocates murder and any such actions taken will be considered the sole, whole, and complete responsibility of the actor.
- wood_spirit 1y agodoesn’t this mean that 100 people and those can benefit indirectly from those 100 people all now have a big financial incentive to hurry his demise?
- jboydyhacker 1y agoonce they all turn 30- he's a dead man.
- re-thc 1y agoDepends if he will still increase his wealth.
- madduci 1y ago> I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of 30 years has elapsed, starting from today. I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account I believe he doesn't even spend time with them at all, or even know their names
- qualeed 1y agoWhy would he? He donated his sperm. Presumably the children are growing up with their own families. It's not very typical for a sperm donor to be involved, or even be aware of, the kids born from the donation.