use Tor Browser.

If your concern is fingerprinting, that is undeniably the best there is out of the box.

If you want Tor Browser without having to use the Tor Network, Mullvad is basically just that; Tor Browser without the Network.

What exactly does Google have left that people like? Gmail?

Nope, not GMail either, even GMail has ads now.

yes but active usage doesnt mean it was not used?

If their criteria was “at least 1 person uses it at all, sometimes” then it would not have been removed 🤔

likely no maintenance effort at all.

The maintenance comes less from the code and more from making sure that every single menu added or changed in any way continues to behave correctly in three different sizes with themes and everything.

It’s hidden away behind a flag now because it hasn’t been actively used for years on end.

Not the other way around.

It is essentially just extra maintenance of a feature in Firefox that (statistically) not many people use

As such, it’s marked as “unsupported” to make clear that if any issues arise, Mozilla won’t help you with those issues.

SimpleX is quite a promising project, uses Double Ratchet End-to-End-Encryption (from Signal), and has a very interesting protocol and model to provide quite strong metadata protection, especially in regards to whom you talk to and groups you’re in.

If your threat model requires exceptionally strong Metadata protection, SimpleX is probably going to be your go-to

Though, for a more lenient threat model, where still good, but less laser-focused metadata protection is enough, Signal will probably do just fine.

Personally I use Signal, but I also have a SimpleX Profile, an XMPP Account and Matrix. (preferred in that order)

It’s not a traditional matrix client mind you, and when I say “Matrix First” I mean architecturally.

Yes.

After their plan of starting with local iMessage and expanding later didn’t turn out well, they turned it around. Start with Matrix, add local bridges later.

The current application is based on the Beeper Mini codebase, is Matrix-First and will soon allow you to use local bridges to better preserve E2EE. As seen by some MSCs opened up by the beeper team, they are also looking into encrypted chat backups with these local bridges.

This is a deliberate decision to force people to turn off tracking protection.

No this is a hilarious fuckup where they forgot to move twitter.com, pbs.twimg.com and more off of the Twitter domains, so Firefox started blocking it because to Firefox it looks like Social Media trackers.

Mozilla already pushed a fix.