Once upon a time there were IRC and XMPP.
But for whatever reason people stick to silly corporate funded gimmicks.
Support open protocols.
I am really happy that for email we still have SMTP and IMAP. And if my current email provider decides to screw me up I will just jump over to another one in a matter of hours.
There is no added value in signal, imessage, whatsapp, threema, icq, viber, telegram, slack.
All these “apps” want to substitute open protocols the same way google and facebook try to replace world wide web.
If we talk about Signal. I am still not convinced. Yes, they are a 501c3 nonprofit. But what they lack is transparency of decision making process. And their governance model is not clear. In other words there is no guarantee that they won’t irreversibly switch from good to evil.
Now, on protocols. Imagine signal was a protocol similar to smtp or xmpp in the sense that you would not be tied to a specific app or server or company or people. Matrix looks promising in this regard but unfortunately matrix is too complicated and at this level its adoption rate will be even lower than signal’s
So why don’t we put some love into creating a protocol for a secure e2e instant messaging and video conferencing that we would stick to for the next 30-40 years?
That would be a real innovation and value for everyone excluding corps and rotten political regimes.