Misleading title.

I've personally used 4 encrypted communication apps, here are my thoughts:

Signal: huge downside that it required a phone number (not sure if it still does), and the centralized nature of it makes me very wary of it. It worked reliably when I did use it, but I no longer use it.

Matrix with Element: As others mentioned, it leaks meta data. It wasn't very reliable in my experience with encrypted group chats. Messages would constantly not be readable by other users in the chat, requiring frequent re-sending to finally get through. Overall I found it very frustrating to use.

XMPP: Experience can somewhat vary depending on the app used. With the Movim desktop front-end, I can sometimes have issues with encrypted messages not getting unencrypted (possibly just user error on my part), but with mobile apps like Conversations or Monocles, its been pretty much 100% reliable. Doesn't drain my battery either. Would recommend.

Deltachat: I've used this the least, but I really like it. Super easy to connect to friends and join a group chat, its all encrypted by default so no real chance of encountering an unencrypted message, very nice UI, is available on all platforms as one app, and has been 100% reliable with low battery drain. Highly recommend if you don't need to make voice calls (it can do texts, images, and supports voice/video files you can send and play within the app).

Self host your matrix server, use Continuwuity not Synapse, and do not enable federation.

Here is a blog post by a widely respected cryptographer on why XMPP+OMEMO is not secure: https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/

The freenet/futo devs are working something called river (https://freenet.org/). I don't think it's mobile yet and cannot attest to it's call quality. It's fully decentralized though, so it should work even if they abandon the project. Here's a video on the protocol https://youtu.be/3SxNBz1VTE0 Mostly goes over the introductory docs that're on the site.

I've hardly used it so far, but simpleX seems promising from my limited knowledge. I highly suggest checking it out.

I know it's not the most popular, but I've genuinely been happy with Matrix for the last few years. Obviously there are problems, but it really has gotten fairly stable. At least...for me...

Prosody XMPP + Pidgin/(Monal|Xabber) has always worked for me. It is not hard to setup or manage, has E2E encryption too.

No idea. I use the app Conversations (XMPP+Omemo) and it works great. Only downside ist that you have to somewhat trust the server you are on, because of metadata. But thats basically every chat app.

Right now, the open source community has so many different ways to communicate.

The problem is what is the goal, privacy or security.

All seem to have benefits and problems.

I use conversations and delta chat. I don't know what is best. But it is better that anything that is owned by big corps.

Tox, where is TOX ? Why it's not mentioned in the article ? It's te most private messaging app, no other app can be more secure.

You should check out "keet" or "Jami" for privacy message app.