today i'm learning i should really start using Signal i guess (they added chat history backup so it's actually viable now)

for me i mainly preferred telegram/discord but the enshittification is really getting to both

matrix is _fine_ if janky, slow and makes me worry every time i join a chat if its going to make my postgres explode

xmpp does not have any decent ios clients so immediately disqualified

i never really used signal because of weird arbitrary limitations (you could only backup chat history if you're on android, device transfer is broken, devices with <7" screens must be a primary device, and >7" screens must be secondary devices, etc)

and the others i have no experience with

@tay only Signal for me, I'm looking forward to Molly's Flatline server, hopefully it will eventually support federation or something.

And someday when Fedi gets E2EE DMs.

I refuse to use anything else because people smarter than me from the cryptography field (e.g. Soatok) have written countless blog posts and articles about why XMPP, Matrix, *shudder* Session and Threema, and so on, suck, and we shouldn't use them if we give a shit about security and privacy.

Telegram is not E2EE unless you use secret chats. Group chats and regular DMs are just not encrypted at all besides standard server security. Discord is a shithole and a privacy nightmare, Stoat (was Revolt, tested it a bit back then) doesn't do much and E2EE has been on the back-burner for years.

Matrix is very problematic because only a few clients implement the latest features so it's either Element / Element X or some other client that has bad UI and doesn't support the latest features.

@tay None of these, the XMPP servers I use are setup for closed groups and non-federating.

IRC has different identities I will not crosslink.

I could make new accounts on other IRC or XMPP servers.

@tay I haven't decided yet, but it'll have to be something with native apps available. I am done with Electron-based apps that support a project I don't like (Chromium), plus which use too much RAM and always just feel laggy. And which always have UI that just feels... weirdly off.

I've been hearing a lot about Fluxer, specifically, but it's unfortunately a total no-go for me. Unless I can find native apps that are compatible and feel good to use, perhaps.

I tried Matrix a couple years ago (I don't remember exactly when; time is a foreign concept to me) and it was confusing. I don't find Mastodon/Fediverse confusing, but Matrix I did.

@tay I voted but... I have next to no experience with most of these platforms unfortunately so I don't know how useful my input would be.

I never really liked Discord as a real-time chat platform and rarely used it for such. Most of what I did use Discord for can easily be replaced with a modern forum system like Discourse and the like. Even though I know it's problematic, for real-time chat Telegram so far is my preferred platform... Mostly because that's where the overwhelming majority of my friends are.