Fun fact: Telegram at some point was blocked in Russia for not giving FSB access to data. Later telegram was unblocked and is used extensively in Russia. It's not hard to figure out why it was unblocked.
After a while they just stopped trying and decided that it's less reputational damage to just let it be.
That's not true. It's legally unblocked. the reason why it was unblocked was never published. "It was unblocked because they gave up" is just your interpretation of the events. Pretty naive one, in my opinion.
Saying Russian government would give a shit about people opinions, funny joke.
When something newsworthy happens in some region, all messengers get blocked in that region for days, Telegram included. They don't care about collateral damage to other websites then.
I doubt they explicitly say to themselves, "Today I do evil for fun and profit.". I wonder what their rationalization is.
https://storage.googleapis.com/gsc-link/cbe9d20e.html
If you're implying it's backdoored, that's a wild mental gymnastics you made there.
No hate, but your comment is speculative in nature.
I'm not even going to mention how many people were arrested over telegram messages in russia.
I'm not sure that counts as an impeccable track record.
Also, it is clear that Durov is a dissident and personally experienced and run away of the dictatorial state. So I think that it is probably one of the tech personality that I trust the most in the world.