Yep. The issue is that they put out a tool that does some good things, but is also heavily adopted by criminals who piggyback on it.
Should we let child abuse just proliferate with these tools, because there’s so much need for privacy? How do you weed out the bad without kneecapping the good? There’s no good answer here. The good parts of the tech working enable the bad parts, too.
There has to be a certain level of knowledge and acceptance of the bad parts to continue developing it. It’s a catch 22, so law enforcement has to pick between sacrificing the privacy or allowing a tool to exist that proliferates child abuse material and other ills.
There are valid arguments for the importance of privacy, and valid arguments for making sure there these crimes shouldn’t have a safe haven. Action to either end will hurt some people and enrage others.
The huge difference between mail or phone and telegram is that both mail and phone work with law enforcement, with useful records being made available upon subpoena. Telegram, by design, will not.
If you think drawing that parallel is useful to Telegram, they would then also be required to maintain the same standards of security as the mail, with package inspections, drug dogs, entire teams of government officials investigating illegal activities etc.
The criminals use it precisely because it is not a parallel to other available channels, as it circumvents those safeguards.