It works like forums, you need to look for an instance with the culture and moderation of your liking.

HN before 2012 was way different back then too.

Enshitification. 100% guarantee if VC funded.

Not San Francisco weird for sure.

All U.S. messaging apps are compromised by U.S. authorities.

Telegram is based in Dubai.

Because they larp as full privacy.

that's the real answer.

Ask yourself why those apps like Signal, Matrix or WhatsApp can run perfectly fine in the West.

Because they don’t have public easily findable chats serving as marketplaces for illegal things?

950 million users story.

This was the reason Telegram is based in Dubai, it was bad move from Durov flying to France.

No, that doesn't matter in the least. It is trivial to kick him off the Western appstores and arrest him in Dubai, so it really doesn't matter. He was allowed to operate - almost certainly in some kind of a deal - until he wasn't.

It's not at all 'trivial' for the EU to have him arrested in Dubai (as opposed to France).

1. Dubai has extradited to the EU in the past, 2. the EU can easily cripple his business and whatever assets he has in his "home" country of France in a couple of weeks. It doesn't even matter if this is about the alleged real criminal activity on Telegram or political persecution like Musk alleges, the moment Durov decided to stop playing ball his life would be miserable no matter his location.