I'm just sad that this basic feature is paywalled and can be bypassed by paying as well lol

It's funny instead. It is just like YouTube that takes money to display your ads and asking takes money from you not to show you ads. In which ever way, money is coming. The difference is that the telegram settings above is atleast free. I am not a heavy user of Telegram, so I don't have issues with the spam and sa there.
True, just ignore unsolicited messages. And never be tempted by the good to be true offer. Oftentimes, scammers reach out to our greed, and it is up to us to entertain; I suggest blocking them completely. There is no good result on these too-good-to-be-true offers; it often ends up in losses.
It seems there is something behind this too-good-to-be-true offers. They have a kind of spiritual bait that attracts their victims lol .
A friend of mine was sent such an offer and he showed it to me, knowing the antics of scammers, I told him to delete the message that it was a scam. Days later, something in him kept telling him that it could be his life changing opportunity. He went ahead to communicate with the scammers and wrote me off the picture. Down the lane he was scammed heavily. He told another of my brother, who later related to me about it...lol