After the Titanic hit the iceberg, the passengers stayed aboard for almost two hours. They were sure it couldn't sink. The lifeboats rowed away half empty.

Durov opened his Oslo Freedom Forum talk with that image, then said the ship of personal freedom has already hit the iceberg, and most of us haven't noticed we're sinking.

He laid out the tricks moving from East to West: thousands arrested in the UK over social posts, "protect the children" used as cover for ID checks and encryption backdoors, and the one that chilled me most, AI tearing the ceiling off surveillance. The KGB had a human limit. It needed officers and hours. AI has neither.

I wrote up the whole speech, the sharpest examples, and where I'd push back 👇

🔗 Telegraph link