Depends on your threat model, as always. If you require absolute anonymity, it's tricky, because it uses phone number during the onboarding process, so get an anonymous pre-paid number and discard it after registration. After onboarding you don't need the number.

For the rest, it's about as "private" as you make it. It supports group messaing, calls and video, so obviously you need to be careful while using it. Everything is e2e encrypted and stays on your local device, the source is available and has been extensively audited.

But yeah, your threat model is the key answer to your question

you have to register with your phone number.

But you dont have to give your phone number out to friends or peopole you meet.

Some family members use Molly-Foss and have no issues.

I use signal-foss from the Twin helix repo, A fork of Signal with proprietary Google binary blobs removed..

https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/

Signal from the F-droid - The guardian project repo, is just signal.

I read that the issue was with signal using google firebase, and that it was easier for the fascist piglets to track your messages through notifications.

I have found that you can actually delete a contact via molly but cannot do it via signal.

With signal you can only block a contact, which for me, is a privacy issues.

If I meet a random person, say on holiday, and we swap details, I want to delete them, not block them, where they remain in my block list forever.

I swap between Signal-FOSS and Molly if I want to delete a contact.

No, and they are supported by US gov (last check), so no good can come of that.

They have your phone number but that's really all they have.

Some people say Bozos can read your metadata because it's hosted on AWS servers but I don't believe that.

Anything that touches greed-incentivizing cr*ptocurrencies turns to shit. Use Matrix, XMPP, or Tox instead.

✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.