It always depends strongly on the use case, so I don’t mean the following as “use this”. Matrix has got me back into XMPP. And I was suprised how much that has improved. Ten years ago it wasn’t usable on mobile devices and people used OTR (I can re ommend trying it again to everyone who’s used it years ago and hasn’t tried it since), now I just use it for my day to day communication with family and friends. My family does not know the term “XMPP”, but they know they have to use an app called Snikket to reach me and they’re pretty happy with the reliability. However, people have different neeeds and threat models, so I am not recommending it blindly.