In a surprising end-of-year message, Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov urged his followers to reduce their sensory overload, highlighting its detrimental effects on mental health. Durov didn’t hold back in criticizing the EU’s privacy laws, declaring them to be a ‘direct attack on personal freedom.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has a ‘late’ Christmas message for his followers. Sharing a post on microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) nearly two weeks after Christmas, Durov writes: “This year, I wish you less — less information, less food, less entertainment, less communication, less stimulation.” “You already have too much of all that, and it stands in the way of your serenity, health, sleep, and creativity. Merry Christmas!,” he says.Pavel Durov’s Christmas message sparked mixed reactions from users with some agreeing with him, while others noting its timing. Commenting on the post, one user wrote “Merry Christmas in January??”. “Isnt it too late to say Merry Christmas?,” asked another user. A third commented asking “Is your scheduled send running 2 weeks late?”. “ChRiTmAs Is OveR…get your eduction up,” said a fourth.“TLDR: may you be less of a dopamine junkie!,” said another user. Telegram CEO: ‘War against privacy never stops in the EU’In another post, Durov said that the war against privacy never ends in the EU. He was responding to a post about the enforcement of DAC8 in the EU. For those unaware, DAC8 refers primarily to the eighth amendment to the European Union’s Directive on Administrative Cooperation that introduces mandatory reporting and automatic exchange of information for crypto-asset transactions.“The war against privacy never stops in the EU. It’s all for their own good, of course. Who knows what those sneaky Europeans can be up to without more surveillance?,” Durov wrote in the post.In another news, Durova recently offered to cover IVF treatments for women willing to use his donated sperm—and promised their children an equal share of his $17 billion fortune, provided they could prove their DNA connection to him, according to Wall Street Journal. The 41-year-old Russian-born tech entrepreneur revealed in July 2024 that he had fathered over 100 biological children across at least 12 countries through sperm donation. Durov began donating sperm around 2010, initially to help a friend conceive before transitioning to anonymous donations at Moscow’s AltraVita fertility clinic.