alt Hacker News> Most of my contacts made the switch, and I’m now at roughly 95% Signal for day-to-day conversations
Years ago, I set up a Matrix server. I got some people to migrate, but ultimately even my husband stopped using it because the UI and accessibility of all the applications was so poor (and he has very bad eyesight, so this was a dealbreaker)
Looking for another alternative, I ended up with Telegram. It was pretty open, easy to work with, had great UI and even a ton of funny stickers and emojis, so I got nearly all my friends to migrate. I did NOT go for Signal because I do not need end-to-end encryption all the time, and having all the same conversations available on my desktop as well as on my phone was important, and still is. Unfortunately, it's also run by a severe weirdo.
So yeah, I'm not really sure what to use now.
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Same, years ago, I set up a Matrix server, because it was advertised as the-new-XMPP (and I had done XMPP as a user, a long time before, and thought it had been quirky enough to warrant a successor protocol).
What I found with Matrix was the same terrible experience you describe, so I gave old XMPP a new look, and it's been great and continuously improving since. I sleep much better at night having my whole family using XMPP over a self-hosted ejabberd than I can using Matrix to talk with them (and synapse... Forget using synapse federated).
On the Matrix accessibility side, Element X has improved loads over the years - https://element.io/blog/helping-to-get-everyone-in-their-ele... and https://element.io/blog/element-is-accessible-by-design/ etc.
Telegram is very much more about IRC / Discord public chat rooms, rather than private group chats.
Recently came across FluffyChat (https://fluffy.chat/), which works on matrix and has funny stickers and emojis ;)
Over the years there's been a couple of apps that have tried to use email protocols as the backend for chat. I really wish those had gained popularity - there's a lot of overlap with messaging and email.
> Unfortunately, it's also run by a severe weirdo.
Marlinspike, Acton, or someone else? Why does this matter?
Telegram is almost on the opposite end of the spectrum of Matrix & Signal so I wouldn’t really consider it an alternative.