frankly, even with unencrypted chats, any law/precedent requiring that platform providers have to scale moderation linearly with the number of users (which is effectively what this is saying) sounds like really bad policy (and probably further prevents the EU from building actual competitors to American tech companies)
It was their decision to become something bigger than a simple messaging app by adding channels and group chats with tons of participants.
It was also their decision to understaff content moderation team.
Sometimes the consequence is a legal action, like the one we're seeing right now. All this could have been easily avoided if they had E2EE or enough people to review reported content and remove it when necessary.
Telegram started 11 years ago. I know the term has been diluted for ages, but it still rubs me the wrong way to use the word startup for decade old businesses.
A straightforward legal responsibility should be shirked because scaling moderation is hard? How many other difficult things do you propose moving outside the law?
The only E2EE in Telegram is called "secret chats" and they're 1-on-1.