News - 24/04/2014

Pavel Durov ousted from VKontakte, leaves Russia

Pavel Durov ousted from VKontakte, leaves Russia


The saga of VKontakte is not limited to the copyright issues that were brought to the fore by the IFPI’s and major label’s lawsuit filed last month in a Russian court. This time the company is making headlines due alleged political censorship attempts by the Russian government - attempts that have resulted in the founder of the site and CEO Pavel Durov being fired from his post.

TechCrunch reports that Durov has now left the country and established a temporary hub in Central Europe with a few engineers where he’s working on a new mobile social network which is going to focus on privacy and freedom of speech.

Russia is in the midst of an international crisis with the Crimea annexation and the issues in Ukraine, it’s quite possible that the government pressured VK into taking down politically-charged comments.

With all this unrest there’s no way of knowing how the lawsuit filed by the labels will shake out. Given Durov’s ousting VK’s board is clearly keen on staying in the government’s good books, which would be enough to help its case.

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