locked Thankfully, the government doesn't need to do anything to take away E2EE in Telegram's case, because Telegram made it so inconvenient to use E2EE that almost nobody uses it. I made a Telegram account fairly recently since we have a public Telegram group bridged to Discord, Matrix etc. for GrapheneOS. I was very surprised to learn that E2EE 1-1 chats do not work on a desktop device, but rather only when both people are on a phone. Furthermore, it seems that it can only be used when both parties are online, otherwise the secret chat disappears until both are.
Your entire post about E2EE and how the government is trying to undermine it (and they are, and they should be stopped) demonstrates why E2EE is something worth using and fighting for, and Telegram made a very deliberate choice to exclude it from its model. That doesn't mean Telegram is a honeypot, it doesn't even necessarily mean it's malicious. Negligent, perhaps. And because anyone tries to say "but Telegram is more like social media! It doesn't need E2EE!", I'm sorry, but when I go to Telegram's front page and scroll down to "Why Telegram?" I'm met with a little duck that tells me Telegram is private and that's why I should use it. it tells me that it's "heavily encrypted". Why should I, as an average user, understand that means that Telegram has the technical means to retrieve conversations I thought private?
I'm not going to get into politics or characterize Durov as trustworthy or untrustworthy, but it feels wrong to rely on someone's resolve to not compromise my data, rather than technical means.
Not only did Telegram design their app in a way that maximizes "usability" (as if other messengers are unusable) in a way that makes it so conversations for the vast majority of users is not E2EE, not only did Telegram heavily market itself as "private and secure", not only did it continuously try to spread FUD about projects like Signal.
People defending that the way Telegram decided to design its messenger makes sense is pretty wild. You can disagree with Durov being charged with whatever he's being charged, and still think Telegram has done a pretty bad job at protecting its users' data.