I've never used WhatsApp (and only briefly tried some of the other listed messengers), but switching from one centralised and commercial system, once it runs into issues as many similar systems did before it, to another very similar system, doesn't seem quite wise. Personally I'm using XMPP and IRC for instant messaging, and tend to recommend the former: it's a nice and federated protocol, with users and software, and perhaps one of the least offenders wrt fragmentation of messengers. Was surprised to see neither of those among poll options.
A good XMPP solution for non-techs is quicksy.im (which is based on the very solid Android Client 'Conversations').
However, while I use XMPP on a daily basis, we have one big issue: There is no good iOS client. So far I have tested ChatSecure, Monal and Siskin, which all support OMEMO end-2-end encryption, but none comes even close to the quality you would expect. ChatSecure seems to be the most mature, but its development seems to have stalled and it has issues like not resuming the connection when the server changes the certificate (pretty often with letsencrypt) until the user confirms the new certificate (if the certificate is valid doesn't matter).
So I think XMPP is the right solution to the problem (being federated and an IETF standard), but the eco system is in need of developers who are willing to bring quality to the clients for all platforms.
We're working on it! Keep tabs on Monal and Siskin. Both are making frequent releases and fixing issues. Please provide feedback about any issues you encounter.
> So I think XMPP is the right solution to the problem (being federated and an IETF standard), but the eco system is in need of developers who are willing to bring quality to the clients for all platforms.
I ended up setting a web interface (converse.js) primarily for use with iOS. No push notifications with it, but also heard that iOS native clients tend to crash and lose messages, and apparently can't run in the background.
iOS doesn't let any apps run in the background. That's "fine" though, because the app can receive push notifications via Apple's push service, and that wakes up the app when you receive a message. That's supported by practically all public XMPP servers these days.
Well, what is not fine though, is the fact, that Apple neither allows other browsers on iOS nor implements the 'Push API' for Safari. This combination makes it impossible to build a chat apps using web technologies (which would lower the effort for building a client quite a lot).
I tried setting up a web-interface and I think converse.js was the least bad. It was still not great; had some issues with group chat bookmarks (I guess there are two standards?) chat-secure and monal both were very marginally better IMO.
+1, it’s crazy to imagine letting someone control the platform and influence the nature of conversations one can have.
Likewise, never used WhatsApp, and communicate with close friends and family via Signal. Once Matrix matures and robustly supports voice/video and group calls, I’ll look towards using that more actively and nudging folks towards that. For the moment, Jitsi is a good solution when needed.
(I happen to be on Discord too, but that’s mainly due to topical communities rather than social messaging. I would love for those to eventually move to Matrix too.)
Non-technical people (friends and family) seem to be fairly comfortable using Conversations on their smartphones, and converse.js seems quite user-friendly in a web browser. But it indeed doesn't always work, and there are people with whom I "only" communicate via phone, email, and in-person.
Also they don't advertise it, but it's actually still running... just no new features, no compatibility with Hangouts/etc. and of course they disabled federation.
