13 ms·

Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

111 points by tolitius 13y ago

sillysaurus3 13y ago
This kind of thing seems to be one reason America is still the best place to start a business. I'm saying that in order to spark a debate and challenge that belief. Would anyone please list some actions taken by the US government which is similar in nature to the takeover illustrated here? It seems very similar to what happened in the middle ages. Before the rise of the merchant class, specifically the ability to defend themselves, bullies stepped in and took what they wanted. Pg went into some detail about that in one of his essays about wealth. The phrase "if you let the nerds keep their lunch money, you rule the world" comes to mind. Might that be changing? Is Russia harming itself by taking these actions? What ways might this action backfire against them? Or is this a new model for how governments should treat corporations that dare challenge their authority? EDIT: I really didn't mean to start a flamewar. My apologies. I was hoping to get people's thoughts on whether governments of the future are going to do this kind of thing more and more (including the US). I should have led with that rather than cheerleading America. EDIT2: I would again like to stress the international nature of this threat. This type of governmental action is something that seems likely to eventually threaten us all, regardless of where we're located. As such, the best thing to do would be to discuss possible ways of protecting ourselves. I would also like to apologize for accidentally insulting everyone who lives in places other than America. Phrasing my comment the way I did was a boneheaded thing to do. It currently reads like an elaborate form of trolling, as if I'm snubbing non-Americans. But in fact I'm just poor with the pen and in reality meant to debate the merits of starting companies in various countries, and to call attention to this international threat. I'm quite sorry for how it sounded. In the meantime, can anyone think of ways of protecting ourselves from centralized government action against businesses?
- paulbaumgart 13y ago
  Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? You have an English-speaking domestic market that accounts for 30% of the planet's GDP, huge talent pools, easy access to capital, a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, significantly above-average rule of law, strong corporate veils, and a mostly tolerable tax burden. It ain't perfect, but you can't do better anywhere else in this solar system.
  - workhere-io 13y ago
    Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? America is no. 14 on the list of best countries to start a business in. http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/ http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/
    - paulbaumgart 13y ago
      So say some journalists. The results speak for themselves. Edit: In case it wasn't apparent, my "ever any doubt" question was rhetorical hyperbole. Any statement, no matter how self-evident, will have some people contradicting it. Edit2: See mtrimpe's comment below; Forbes is probably optimizing for small business in their analysis instead of startups with potential for high scalability.
      - workhere-io 13y ago
        In case it wasn't apparent, my "ever any doubt" question was rhetorical hyperbole. Any statement, no matter how self-evident, will have some people contradicting it. Your argument that the US is the best place to start a business is not in any way "self-evident", and you have provided no source or proof. So say some journalists. Their methodology seems sound. "We determined the Best Countries for Business by looking at 11 different factors for 134 countries. We considered property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance. Forbes leaned on research and published reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, the World Bank and World Economic Forum to compile the rankings." http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2011/10/03/the-best-countries-for-business/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2011/10/03/the-b...
        paulbaumgart 13y ago
        They left out "size and wealth of domestic market" and "access to capital," which I suspect are the most important factors beyond a minimal level of market fairness. It's really not self-evident that the vast majority of successful companies are started in the US?
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  Most people don't realise that Russia is a brutal petro-chemical dictatorship in economical decline which is clamping down hard on human rights, freedom of the press and radicalising its population through propaganda. I've been following the Crimea conflict very closely (which almost certainly is also what caused Pavel's departure) and the seriousness of the situation is heavily underestimated by the world. The Russian economy is heavily dependent on gas exports, and both income from - and production of gas is declining. A small elite has been massively siphoning off wealth from those natural resources and is desperate to stay in control. Given the situation they (rightfully) fear being overthrown and to prevent that they've started 'restoring Russia to it's former glory,' appealing to traditional family values by introducing anti-gay laws, introducing laws against protesting, laws against criticising Russia, shutting down independent media and distributing propaganda from the remaining station which gets ever more removed from reality by the day. It is in that context that the VKontakte departure must be seen, and therefore it's difficult to make direct comparisons between Russia and the US: they are truly orders of magnitude apart right now. P.S. It is important to keep in mind that you could also argue that something similar happened in the US with the NSA scandals but in the US none of the CEOs chose to resign.
  - insuffi 13y ago
    The seriousness of the conflict depends on where you get your information, sadly. The situation geopolitically seems pretty simple, in broad strokes. Too bad there's unfounded scaremongering on both sides(or should I say 3 or 4 sides).
    - mtrimpe 13y ago
      It more seems that the seriousness of the conflict depends on whether you see this as an isolated incident (which just happens to be the worst violation of territorial integrity in Europe since WWII) or as yet another indicator that the exact same social dynamics that led us to WWII in the first place are intensifying significantly. I'm curious as to what your take on this is then though ...
      - 13y ago
- shmerl 13y ago
  > I'm saying that in order to spark a debate and challenge that belief. Would anyone please list some actions taken by the US government which is similar in nature to the takeover illustrated here? Killing Lavabit for instance?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The US didn't kill Lavabit, so much as Lavabit decided to start an untenable business: one in which they vouchsafed secrecy to their customers but retained the ability to compromise that secrecy. To understand how dumb that is, consider that AOL(!) runs a popular messaging service on which thousands of people exchange secure messages using OTR-enabled clients, and AOL could not be "killed" the way Lavabit was: the DOJ can't coerce AOL into betraying OTR-protected users, because AOL simply doesn't have that ability. The reason Lavabit did have that ability is that getting users to install software is inconvenient and drastically harms adoption. Lavabit took a shortcut, and their users shared the resulting pain. If you review the list of countries preceding the US on the Forbes list posted upthread, you won't find too many that wouldn't have left Lavabit similarly exposed.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      Yes, Lavabit made a serious mistake of leaving a technical ability to compromise their users. However it doesn't change the fact that US killed it since the government wanted to have access to all users' data without any restrictions and warrants. Lavabit's mistake doesn't in any way reduce the abusive nature and unconstitutionality of that move.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I'm assuming it doesn't change your mind at all that Levison cooperated with a series of unrelated preceding warrants, handing over user information, and that (as I understand it) the DOJ only demanded their expansive intrusion after Levison refused to comply in a similar fashion to a warrant apparently related to Snowden, with whose politics Levison agreed.
aspidistra 13y ago
For UK readers and or football fans, the Alisher Usmanov mentioned, who now controls VKontakte, is the same Alisher Usmanov who owns a large stake in Arsenal FC. He also owns a stake in Odnoklassniki, another Russian social media site, which is "for classmates and old friends", a bit like Friends Reunited: http://odnoklassniki.ru/ http://odnoklassniki.ru/
- dopamean 13y ago
  As a long time Arsenal fan, fuck Usmanov.
- vellum 13y ago
  The remaining 40 percent of VK belonged to the Mail.ru group, co-owned by … Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov owns shares in a lot of Silicon Valley companies.[1] Mail.ru's former chairman, Yuri Milner, funded the automatic Y Combinator investments from 2011-2013.[2] 1: http://www.usm-group.com/internet.html http://www.usm-group.com/internet.html Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga, Spotify, Zalando, ZocDoc, Airbnb, Alibaba and 360buy. 2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-venture-milner-ycombinator-idUSBRE9BF1GA20131216 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-venture-milner-...
skolos 13y ago
In the early days of odnoklassniki and VKontakte there was a joke in Russia that KGB invented them as better version of its secret files on people. Now it does not look like a joke anymore.
- myth_drannon 13y ago
  Actually it was originally a serious concern with the Facebook where CIA originally invested through one of its tech funds. KGB is not that smart :)
  - beagle3 13y ago
    I don't think the concern ever went away. And with all the snowden revelations so far, I guess it is reasonable to promote it from concern to near certainty.
pgt 13y ago
For those who don't know what VKontakte is (I didn't), it is the biggest social network after Facebook with "over 100 million active users" according to vk.com, which they own. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_network) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_network)
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Perhaps China has a few bigger networks.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Minor nit, but your linked reference notes: [VK] is 8th most popular social networking site in the world http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites [This list itself may be open to question, however. See for example some major exclusions: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-quick-guide-to-chinas-social-networks-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-quick-guide-to-chinas-socia...]
- caractacus 13y ago
  And it has an immense selection of music and video. I mean, positively incredible. Before Spotify swept up just about every single artist ever known to man, VK was the place to find recordings of even that obscure 80s band you saw down the New Cross tavern on a Tuesday night with seven other people and a dog. Better selection than Oink in its heyday. And if you're Russian, there's no reason to ever go anywhere else for film or television.
jedmeyers 13y ago
Did someone consider the fact that this might be an April 1st joke?
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  Who would have thought that it was a joke! Let's down vote my original skeptical post even more!
- spada 13y ago
  It's not. It's been a long coming process.
  - jedmeyers 13y ago
    "I'm not going anywhere — and remain the CEO of VKontakte," Pavel Durov wrote on his VKontakte account. And who is the stupid one now?
  - krick 13y ago
    Could you provide some proof links please? Because that thing sounds really unbelievable, and given the date… That's why I hate that stupid 'holiday' so much!
    - danabramov 13y ago
      A journalist I know confirms it's true (coming from good sources he says). Also several Russian media news sites (that have good ties with VK) confirm it's not a joke.
      - danabramov 13y ago
        Ouch! In the end, it was a joke.
    - krasin 13y ago
      http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2443179 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2443179 (in Russian, but it's more-or-less respectable newspaper)
huhtenberg 13y ago
This kinda puts Telegraph project in a different light, doesn't it?
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  A worse light, perhaps? Telegram sells snake oil and ignores security recommendations while billing itself as secure. They may only be "saved" because they actually believe what they're selling (although they shouldn't after being shot down so quickly).
  - huhtenberg 13y ago
    Snap out of that mindless Telegram bashing loop, will you? If anything, this CEO departure only shows that HN got the motivation for Telegram completely wrong. The assumption behind that gang up was that Telegram was trying to sabotage online privacy, because what else a Facebook-like entity may be doing in the domain of secure communications. Guess what? There was more to the picture than met the eye.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago
      There was no assumption of sabotage that I saw. Just a bunch of stubbornness while ignoring security expert's suggestions, followed by a compromise of their highly touted security. What part did I miss?
myth_drannon 13y ago
Utmost respect to Pavel for the courage. When NSA pushed the US companies they all, ALL CEOs just complied. Facebook,Google, Yahoo... all of them....
shmerl 13y ago
Does anyone still trust centralized social networks these days?
- krick 13y ago
  Umm, I personally don't, but given there's 228 million users of VK and 1.23 billion users of FB… Yeah, I guess somebody does.
- beagle3 13y ago
  I think anyone who had actually valued their privacy and spent a few minutes thinking about it, did not trust one to start with. And the rest still seem to trust it.
avodonosov 13y ago
The article tries to make out of thin air an impression that Kremlin took over VK by force, or something like that. Which is a complete bullshit IMHO. Durov and others just exchanged their shares to cash, that's all. Trying to mention this together with the fact that Durov disobeyed traffic cop order and hit him with his car (he did, that's a proven case, there is a video), doesn't make it a "Kremlin forceful takeover of VK"
- danabramov 13y ago
  Selling shares and resigning as CEO were two separate events.
  - avodonosov 13y ago
    two related events
at-fates-hands 13y ago
This was in the related article that talked about how Putin muscled his way into the company before Durov sold off his shares: "It essentially means that there's a glass ceiling to how big you can grow your company, and how influential your company can be in the Russian internet space before the government begins to take interest in it," http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies-seized-control-over-russias-facebook-pavel-durov-vk http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies... Isn't this how it's always been in Russia?
- korzun 13y ago
  Isn't this how it's always been in US? We all know that Facebook does not work with government. Right?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
danabramov 13y ago
It was a joke. https://vk.com/durov?w=wall1_45618 https://vk.com/durov?w=wall1_45618

111 points by tolitius 13y ago

This kind of thing seems to be one reason America is still the best place to start a business. I'm saying that in order to spark a debate and challenge that belief. Would anyone please list some actions taken by the US government which is similar in nature to the takeover illustrated here? It seems very similar to what happened in the middle ages. Before the rise of the merchant class, specifically the ability to defend themselves, bullies stepped in and took what they wanted. Pg went into some detail about that in one of his essays about wealth. The phrase "if you let the nerds keep their lunch money, you rule the world" comes to mind. Might that be changing? Is Russia harming itself by taking these actions? What ways might this action backfire against them? Or is this a new model for how governments should treat corporations that dare challenge their authority? EDIT: I really didn't mean to start a flamewar. My apologies. I was hoping to get people's thoughts on whether governments of the future are going to do this kind of thing more and more (including the US). I should have led with that rather than cheerleading America. EDIT2: I would again like to stress the international nature of this threat. This type of governmental action is something that seems likely to eventually threaten us all, regardless of where we're located. As such, the best thing to do would be to discuss possible ways of protecting ourselves. I would also like to apologize for accidentally insulting everyone who lives in places other than America. Phrasing my comment the way I did was a boneheaded thing to do. It currently reads like an elaborate form of trolling, as if I'm snubbing non-Americans. But in fact I'm just poor with the pen and in reality meant to debate the merits of starting companies in various countries, and to call attention to this international threat. I'm quite sorry for how it sounded. In the meantime, can anyone think of ways of protecting ourselves from centralized government action against businesses?

paulbaumgart 13y ago
Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? You have an English-speaking domestic market that accounts for 30% of the planet's GDP, huge talent pools, easy access to capital, a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, significantly above-average rule of law, strong corporate veils, and a mostly tolerable tax burden. It ain't perfect, but you can't do better anywhere else in this solar system.
- workhere-io 13y ago
  Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? America is no. 14 on the list of best countries to start a business in. http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/ http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/
  - paulbaumgart 13y ago
    So say some journalists. The results speak for themselves. Edit: In case it wasn't apparent, my "ever any doubt" question was rhetorical hyperbole. Any statement, no matter how self-evident, will have some people contradicting it. Edit2: See mtrimpe's comment below; Forbes is probably optimizing for small business in their analysis instead of startups with potential for high scalability.
    - workhere-io 13y ago
      In case it wasn't apparent, my "ever any doubt" question was rhetorical hyperbole. Any statement, no matter how self-evident, will have some people contradicting it. Your argument that the US is the best place to start a business is not in any way "self-evident", and you have provided no source or proof. So say some journalists. Their methodology seems sound. "We determined the Best Countries for Business by looking at 11 different factors for 134 countries. We considered property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance. Forbes leaned on research and published reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, the World Bank and World Economic Forum to compile the rankings." http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2011/10/03/the-best-countries-for-business/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2011/10/03/the-b...
      - paulbaumgart 13y ago
        They left out "size and wealth of domestic market" and "access to capital," which I suspect are the most important factors beyond a minimal level of market fairness. It's really not self-evident that the vast majority of successful companies are started in the US?
mtrimpe 13y ago
Most people don't realise that Russia is a brutal petro-chemical dictatorship in economical decline which is clamping down hard on human rights, freedom of the press and radicalising its population through propaganda. I've been following the Crimea conflict very closely (which almost certainly is also what caused Pavel's departure) and the seriousness of the situation is heavily underestimated by the world. The Russian economy is heavily dependent on gas exports, and both income from - and production of gas is declining. A small elite has been massively siphoning off wealth from those natural resources and is desperate to stay in control. Given the situation they (rightfully) fear being overthrown and to prevent that they've started 'restoring Russia to it's former glory,' appealing to traditional family values by introducing anti-gay laws, introducing laws against protesting, laws against criticising Russia, shutting down independent media and distributing propaganda from the remaining station which gets ever more removed from reality by the day. It is in that context that the VKontakte departure must be seen, and therefore it's difficult to make direct comparisons between Russia and the US: they are truly orders of magnitude apart right now. P.S. It is important to keep in mind that you could also argue that something similar happened in the US with the NSA scandals but in the US none of the CEOs chose to resign.
- insuffi 13y ago
  The seriousness of the conflict depends on where you get your information, sadly. The situation geopolitically seems pretty simple, in broad strokes. Too bad there's unfounded scaremongering on both sides(or should I say 3 or 4 sides).
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    It more seems that the seriousness of the conflict depends on whether you see this as an isolated incident (which just happens to be the worst violation of territorial integrity in Europe since WWII) or as yet another indicator that the exact same social dynamics that led us to WWII in the first place are intensifying significantly. I'm curious as to what your take on this is then though ...
    - 13y ago
shmerl 13y ago
> I'm saying that in order to spark a debate and challenge that belief. Would anyone please list some actions taken by the US government which is similar in nature to the takeover illustrated here? Killing Lavabit for instance?
- tptacek 13y ago
  The US didn't kill Lavabit, so much as Lavabit decided to start an untenable business: one in which they vouchsafed secrecy to their customers but retained the ability to compromise that secrecy. To understand how dumb that is, consider that AOL(!) runs a popular messaging service on which thousands of people exchange secure messages using OTR-enabled clients, and AOL could not be "killed" the way Lavabit was: the DOJ can't coerce AOL into betraying OTR-protected users, because AOL simply doesn't have that ability. The reason Lavabit did have that ability is that getting users to install software is inconvenient and drastically harms adoption. Lavabit took a shortcut, and their users shared the resulting pain. If you review the list of countries preceding the US on the Forbes list posted upthread, you won't find too many that wouldn't have left Lavabit similarly exposed.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Yes, Lavabit made a serious mistake of leaving a technical ability to compromise their users. However it doesn't change the fact that US killed it since the government wanted to have access to all users' data without any restrictions and warrants. Lavabit's mistake doesn't in any way reduce the abusive nature and unconstitutionality of that move.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I'm assuming it doesn't change your mind at all that Levison cooperated with a series of unrelated preceding warrants, handing over user information, and that (as I understand it) the DOJ only demanded their expansive intrusion after Levison refused to comply in a similar fashion to a warrant apparently related to Snowden, with whose politics Levison agreed.

aspidistra 13y ago

For UK readers and or football fans, the Alisher Usmanov mentioned, who now controls VKontakte, is the same Alisher Usmanov who owns a large stake in Arsenal FC. He also owns a stake in Odnoklassniki, another Russian social media site, which is "for classmates and old friends", a bit like Friends Reunited: http://odnoklassniki.ru/ http://odnoklassniki.ru/

dopamean 13y ago
As a long time Arsenal fan, fuck Usmanov.
vellum 13y ago
The remaining 40 percent of VK belonged to the Mail.ru group, co-owned by … Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov owns shares in a lot of Silicon Valley companies.[1] Mail.ru's former chairman, Yuri Milner, funded the automatic Y Combinator investments from 2011-2013.[2] 1: http://www.usm-group.com/internet.html http://www.usm-group.com/internet.html Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga, Spotify, Zalando, ZocDoc, Airbnb, Alibaba and 360buy. 2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-venture-milner-ycombinator-idUSBRE9BF1GA20131216 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-venture-milner-...

skolos 13y ago

In the early days of odnoklassniki and VKontakte there was a joke in Russia that KGB invented them as better version of its secret files on people. Now it does not look like a joke anymore.

myth_drannon 13y ago
Actually it was originally a serious concern with the Facebook where CIA originally invested through one of its tech funds. KGB is not that smart :)
- beagle3 13y ago
  I don't think the concern ever went away. And with all the snowden revelations so far, I guess it is reasonable to promote it from concern to near certainty.

pgt 13y ago

For those who don't know what VKontakte is (I didn't), it is the biggest social network after Facebook with "over 100 million active users" according to vk.com, which they own. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_network) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_network)

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Perhaps China has a few bigger networks.
001sky 13y ago
Minor nit, but your linked reference notes: [VK] is 8th most popular social networking site in the world http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites [This list itself may be open to question, however. See for example some major exclusions: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-quick-guide-to-chinas-social-networks-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-quick-guide-to-chinas-socia...]
caractacus 13y ago
And it has an immense selection of music and video. I mean, positively incredible. Before Spotify swept up just about every single artist ever known to man, VK was the place to find recordings of even that obscure 80s band you saw down the New Cross tavern on a Tuesday night with seven other people and a dog. Better selection than Oink in its heyday. And if you're Russian, there's no reason to ever go anywhere else for film or television.

jedmeyers 13y ago

Did someone consider the fact that this might be an April 1st joke?

jedmeyers 13y ago
Who would have thought that it was a joke! Let's down vote my original skeptical post even more!
spada 13y ago
It's not. It's been a long coming process.
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  "I'm not going anywhere — and remain the CEO of VKontakte," Pavel Durov wrote on his VKontakte account. And who is the stupid one now?
- krick 13y ago
  Could you provide some proof links please? Because that thing sounds really unbelievable, and given the date… That's why I hate that stupid 'holiday' so much!
  - danabramov 13y ago
    A journalist I know confirms it's true (coming from good sources he says). Also several Russian media news sites (that have good ties with VK) confirm it's not a joke.
    - danabramov 13y ago
      Ouch! In the end, it was a joke.
  - krasin 13y ago
    http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2443179 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2443179 (in Russian, but it's more-or-less respectable newspaper)

huhtenberg 13y ago

This kinda puts Telegraph project in a different light, doesn't it?

MichaelGG 13y ago
A worse light, perhaps? Telegram sells snake oil and ignores security recommendations while billing itself as secure. They may only be "saved" because they actually believe what they're selling (although they shouldn't after being shot down so quickly).
- huhtenberg 13y ago
  Snap out of that mindless Telegram bashing loop, will you? If anything, this CEO departure only shows that HN got the motivation for Telegram completely wrong. The assumption behind that gang up was that Telegram was trying to sabotage online privacy, because what else a Facebook-like entity may be doing in the domain of secure communications. Guess what? There was more to the picture than met the eye.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    There was no assumption of sabotage that I saw. Just a bunch of stubbornness while ignoring security expert's suggestions, followed by a compromise of their highly touted security. What part did I miss?

myth_drannon 13y ago

Utmost respect to Pavel for the courage. When NSA pushed the US companies they all, ALL CEOs just complied. Facebook,Google, Yahoo... all of them....

shmerl 13y ago

Does anyone still trust centralized social networks these days?

krick 13y ago
Umm, I personally don't, but given there's 228 million users of VK and 1.23 billion users of FB… Yeah, I guess somebody does.
beagle3 13y ago
I think anyone who had actually valued their privacy and spent a few minutes thinking about it, did not trust one to start with. And the rest still seem to trust it.

avodonosov 13y ago

The article tries to make out of thin air an impression that Kremlin took over VK by force, or something like that. Which is a complete bullshit IMHO. Durov and others just exchanged their shares to cash, that's all. Trying to mention this together with the fact that Durov disobeyed traffic cop order and hit him with his car (he did, that's a proven case, there is a video), doesn't make it a "Kremlin forceful takeover of VK"

danabramov 13y ago
Selling shares and resigning as CEO were two separate events.
- avodonosov 13y ago
  two related events

at-fates-hands 13y ago

This was in the related article that talked about how Putin muscled his way into the company before Durov sold off his shares: "It essentially means that there's a glass ceiling to how big you can grow your company, and how influential your company can be in the Russian internet space before the government begins to take interest in it," http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies-seized-control-over-russias-facebook-pavel-durov-vk http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies... Isn't this how it's always been in Russia?

korzun 13y ago
Isn't this how it's always been in US? We all know that Facebook does not work with government. Right?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

danabramov 13y ago

It was a joke. https://vk.com/durov?w=wall1_45618 https://vk.com/durov?w=wall1_45618