It seems like I constantly see “X secure messaging option is actually bullshit because it was purchased by Dr. Evil and Y is actually just e-mailing your messages directly to Xi Jinping.”
Is there an authoritatively “best” one I can just…download and setup easily? Is Signal good? Or do I need to solder a Raspberry Pi to the flux modulator of my home Linux NAS GUI, etc…?
Signal has good encryption etc, is centralized, afaik needs Google Play Services except if you use Molly; but I think it’s a bit more mainstream and simple to use for end-users
SimpleX also seems to have good encryption, post-quantum etc, and is anonymous and doesn’t even use user identifiers (they explain why that’s good on their website), so it could be good for occasional more sensitive conversations or sth (but I see people struggling with onboarding when installing it, and I still get confused by the UX sometimes). It’s kind of not even decentralized, more like peer-to-peer, with servers to just cache messages when you’re offline, I think.
Personally for day-to-day I prefer to use Matrix with Element: decentralized (which I really value for competition and user choice), e2e, and has good support for creating communities etc, so I’m lucky to have it as our main chat platform for work, and I’ve been using it for years in our hackerspace and personal chats etc. I see end-users still struggling sometimes with onboarding, but if they’re close friends/family I usually need to set it up for them anyway
Signal runs just fine without play services for me. It does drain quite a bit of battery without cloud messaging, but that is to be excepted since it needs to keep its own connection up in that case