Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.
To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.
If they cared about privacy then they wouldn’t use a searchable public database like FB.
I think there’s misconceptions, trust being put in the wrong place, unawareness involved, or simply they don’t think it through, rather than not caring (anectodal/IMO). E.g. “I don’t have anything to hide, so what if they collect everything”.
If we could build a tool to gather such info, that’s easily accessible and for free, to show all the data available on you in the marketplace - that might make them uncomfortable. And then perhaps they’ll start to try and understand why they’re uncomfortable, and why this is bad.