I am really confused why not more people consider switching to the Conversations XMPP client (or the blabber.im fork).
It has all the features comparable to WhatsAPP/Telegram/Signal/Matrix etc. but is fully libre, e2ee, decentralized and by far the most privacy preserving. And you can easily use a XMPP Desktop client like Gajim or Dino with the same account.
And there are tens of thousands local and non-profit XMPP servers to use and self-hosting a XMPP server for your and your friends & family can be easily done on a RasberryPI from home or really cheap VPS (contrary to Matrix).
There is really no comparable alternative out there, so it is really baffling that it gets recommended so rarely.
I also disagree with phone-number use, but there’s a trade-off with what we want everyone to use and what we want to personally use. Phone-number based signup is more effective for most people to sign-up and it’s not possible to compete with that no matter how much you explain why it’s worse.
I agree with avoiding iOS, I wouldn’t buy an Apple device, but I can’t do anything about my friends and family who use Apple. I’ve found Monal to be better than Siskin for OMEMO and push-notifications (anecdotes from a friend on iOS who puts up with me insisting on using xmpp). That said Conversations is more feature complete and nicer.