@mel personally, I do find there's a big difference between "this faceless corporate money machine, which I don't trust at all, have access to my private messages¹" versus "My instance admins, who I've actually chatted to and seen like good people, have access to my private messages²"
1: and WILL access them, just as soon as they even think they know how to monetize them, if they haven't already
2: but why would they access them? There's no motive here