First time I have ever seen this actually being discussed online.

Twenty or so of my friends of friends use Telegram. None of them use it for mundane things such as chatting. You name the content, you have a channel for it, ergo you have direct download links for it.

But how is this any worse than downloading illegal content through torrents (TPB et al.)?

EDIT: Should have worded this more correctly. I am not a participant in pirating stuff through Telegram, my friends are; I use it for Android stuff (Substratum, custom ROM support, etc.).