Is any of these apps good for phone calls or video calls, or just text messages?

Don't forget Briar!

Simplex is a dog though compared to Signal.

And I'm telling you, it won't happen. They will probably require some other UUID.

Signal had made it clear that they need to identify their user's identities.

Mark my words: if you try to create an account on TAILS, and your fingerprint isn't unique, you'll get an error when you try to create the account.

It's pretty easy to detect spam.

Tell that to... any social media. Lol. If was easy to detect bot you think they not big problem anymore.

It’s pretty easy to detect spam. I guess user reports and noticing when someone suddenly messages many new users and those users do not respond.

It's not so easy, because you could even register a new account for each new spam message, or register 100k accounts & only send out 3 messages a day / account..

Unencrypted by default (among other bad defaults), leaks metadata like it was built to do so, makes it surprisingly difficult to tell what's encrypted and what's not, filled to the brim with bugs and exploits, bad feature interop between most clients (most of which have known vulnerabilities or abandoned dependencies), defacto-standard "just use synapse/element if you want things to work properly" (and still doesn't), bad user communication about well everything but mainly teaching new users what all the things mean (session, verification, 1:1 vs jitsi, when you're using what,...), ton of federation issues and bugs, ...

And despite all that it somehow has a massive csam seeding problem, which really just makes me think the whole thing is a telegram-like fed psyop but one level higher on the tech competency ladder.

... Multi-device session chaining is a neat feature and surprisingly user-friendly (tho no one maintains their session list or verification; half pebkac admittedly), so that's something nice I can say about it... But almost nothing else.

Seriously, Signal is basically a joint three-letter-agency sigint project and I still think it's safer and easier to use than matrix for the vast vast vast majority of people

Yes, that means it's synchronous.

My point is that we need servers for asynchronous messaging (or some clever network where everyone is a server relaying messages for others). Lacking asynchronous messaging is not going to be a practical solution for 99% of people.

Encryption works. We don't need to trust servers. They're not inherently an issue for security nor anonymity.

huh? you can't see the difference between a grapheneos burner linked to a gov ID backed phone number and one that isn't?

like what happens when you go to a protest and they pull out a Stingray and get your IMEI+ICCID down that's directly linked to you? you're telling me you don't see any issues with cops/ICE being able to know exactly who goes where?

this has strong "I don't need freedom of speech because I have nothing to say" vibes - it's fine if you don't see the value but I can assure there very much is

Remember metadata , they also know person A send message to person B at specific time. Of course knowing phone number also gives them your location from cellular towers.

nonexistent.

unless someone literally invites you to the chat you're not getting in.

unless you literally allow someone to scan your code, you will not be able to send them messages.