This could be a long conversation. The short version is there are plenty of articles online by marginalized groups talking about the consequences of having no ability to block arbitrary groups from harassing them online. If someone is calling that "just an annoyance" they've likely never been the target of an extended public harassment campaign.

A slightly longer answer is that the consequences to privacy and security are in a practical sense -- in the sense that someone coming into my house is a violation of my security and privacy. Privacy is not just about hiding information, it's also about why we hide information. It's about the ability to be private; to not be forced to constantly listen to a bunch of people shout at you. Similarly, security exists for a reason, we have security in our homes in the sense that people can't just walk into them and start yelling at us and harassing us. And DMs should be thought of as analogous.

Your DMs are not secure if you have no way to turn them off or restrict them.

> The ability to block users was always there and it still there for free.

If you recognize that is important to privacy and security to be able to block individual users, it's not too hard to recognize that the requirement to individually block users leaves a huge gaping hole in security for a network that supports open registrations.

I use disposable email addresses rather than just blocking individual spammers in my email client. The reason is because there are a near-infinite number of spammers and blocking them one-by-one is ineffective. Being able to turn off a leaked email address is much more valuable to me. It's something that actually cuts down on spam.

And the same is true on social media -- being able to go private and turn off messages or restrict messages to certain subgroups is critically important for people who are stuck in the middle of public harassment campaigns.

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Regardless, the lack of a feature that is pretty much standardized across most other platforms, and that is pretty widely recognized as a safety feature -- it doesn't make me feel better about Telegram's willingness to gate these kinds of features behind paywalls.

You're saying that the ability to block users is free, but there is no bright line between blocking users and setting general messaging restrictions. That is the same category of safety feature. There's no reason to believe that Telegram wouldn't make blocking users into a paid feature in the future, especially since it has demonstrated that blocking/moderation/lockdown features are something it is willing to monetize.