Back in my day if a chat service went to shit we'd just delete it and use one of the six other chat programs on our computers that all our mates were spread between, and it really *was* a "just" in that scenario because everyone we talked to also had at least two other chat programs to talk to their other mates, we routed around enshittification effortlessly like a stream around the rocks

A chat program going to shit is normal, that's what they do, the aberration is that this time it's Big News because this one got way way way too big

Old man shouts at cloud

(EDIT: personally I like Jabber, ask around, one of your mutuals is probably running a server. Voice/video/images/groupchats OK, Jabber servers federate like fedi, chinwag can talk to trashserver can talk to disroot, doesn't matter where you sign up, or use Snikket or Prosody and run your own chat server on a proper server in the cloud or a shit old computer in your basement and give it a funny/obscene name; for an app use Conversations from F-Droid on Android or Siskin on apple phones, if you like browser-based then check out conversejs, embed a chat box on your website that can talk to other chat boxes on other websites, I Just Think It's Neat)