The usefulnes of a system is often measured by the amount of illegal shit it can handle. Nobody would really use a stick or a fire if it required a law enforcement officer standing behind you the whole time.
On the other hand, Telegram was always intentionally not secure, nor private. So it’s not that thay can’t comply. They just decided not to (as far as we know).
- - tinfoil hat on - -
This is not really about moderation. The europeans just want to evasdrop on the russians.
- - tinfoil hat off - -
Gmail offers imap amd smtp access. You have to enable 2FA, and then it will allow you to create account for so called “less secure apps”.
In your place, I’d either continue using gmail directly, or finish the configuration of the self hosted mail server and just use that with any smtp/imap client. I suggest getting a separate domain for testing first, before moving your primary inbox there.