Many people will tell you you have to sacrifice your principles because interface, because "normies" (which is an elitist way of telling you that non-elitist people are idiots....), etc. I say: stick to your dreams!

I’ve used XMPP since shortly after it was developed. I still use it today.

HOWEVER, while the clients are relatively good, as long as they support the extensions you want to use, I’ve found maintaining the server to be a royal headache. Between protocol and extension improvements, security updates and general server instability, I find that it’s a constant struggle to have it running and compatible with whatever client someone is using, when someone actually uses it.

Signal, on the other hand, pretty much always works, has a single client, and nobody has to worry about managing the server except Signal. So as infrastructure, it makes a lot more sense.

First of all, thank you for your recommendation. I was on the fence between Siskin IM and Monal, so I went with Monal to replace AstraChat.

I’ve used Signal before and it was fine but I prefer not to give a phone number to open an account; there are other services that don’t require it.

Speaking of services, I use Simple X, Session, Matrix and Delta Chat (occasionally). Most of my eccentric mix of family, friends and colleagues are happy to try something new or switch as long as it doesn’t require a phone number to sign up. They’re slowly leaving Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and limiting access to their iMessage.

In my experience, Session syncs very well between my devices which makes it my favorite. I chose FluffyChat over Element because of the App Privacy in iOS.

I use Telegram. Eek? It's just my wife and I though. All these things I've heard about Telegram? Never actually seen them in mine. I have looked at groups, but I've only seen memes, crypto crap, and what look like scams ("post this in 5 Reddit threads to get invited to the actual group"). There's nothing of value out there that I've seen. So I just use it to message my wife, because texting wasn't good enough when we started using it (both our phones have RCS now) and I don't use Facebook, and she doesn't have an iPhone (so, no iMessage).

I completely reject this notion that you have to pick one and stay with it. My messaging apps include iMessage, Session, Signal, and Telegram. I also have a fork of Telegram that lets me use it from my watch (as in, it has a watch companion; official Telegram does not). I also have Discord (need it for a couple things).

I used xmpp with otr encryption... maybe also omemo, it rings a bell. This was some years ago. But it was barely usable. Otr refused to connect at times and only unecrypted worked, messages were encrypted with wrong keys or something and history became unreadable. It worked on the desktop, but then not on the phone, only with this and that client, but not those. It was a confusing mess and I had to stop using it. If it works today, thats great.

Speaking of wacky hole in the wall messagers!

https://reticulum.network/

Its tectonically a network stack but theres a few apps, to use it. And MAAAN is it decentralized