For me it's Discord, I can't find a good enough self hosted alternative with all the features me and my friends want.

Imagine it's the 90s again, everyone has a phone number, but one person will only talk to you via ham radio. Same energy.

For communication, people will prefer what everyone is using, simply because it's easier to reach someone else. Herd behavior. You can try to get them in, but pressure will mean that it'll be you who will have to either give up and cave in to use Discord, Whatsapp, etc, or get removed from the talks for refusing to be where they want to.

I wish I could leave whatsapp, but it's a literal case of "everyone uses it" in Brazil. Even the short, justice mandated wpp blackouts couldn't keep people on telegram for more than 2 days.

It's hard - give them a compelling reason to leave. I use Telegram, Signal, Discord and Session... Discord is rarely used - I use Telegram and Signal the most. Session is quite new.

But what we need is for someone like Mozilla to make a messaging app - someone with the users best interest at the heart, and who don't share anything with anyone else... And at a reasonable price... Privacy isn't free - if anyone should be in doubt.

I think for my friends it's just what we have been using for literally a decade since we were kids, combined with apathy towards privacy - although of my friends does use duckduckgo. I don't judge them for that since I've been pretty bad with privacy. I do worry if we get into more activism that we will need to secure our privacy

I'm personally trapped on Discord and Instagram.

Discord is required by my workplace, so no way of getting rid of it until everyone decides to move to something better. I have some friends on it too, but most of them also made Matrix accounts when I explained I won't be very reachable on Discord (I only open it when necessary; and it doesn'r run on my phone since they rewrote the app in JS). I have Instagram as a way to people I meet during travel or events to "add me" easily, and then we can figure out a good way to communicate afterward. I'm not too bothered by having it as I don't use it daily or anything.

Totally get you. It's why I roll my eyes anytime someone say "Be the change you want to see" as if I wasn't trying to and also getting a burntout from doing so. Easier said than done.

Sadly, people are simply just so comfortable with whatever massaging & social media app they used that trying out other alternatives is immediately dismissed as a inconvenient before they even tried it. And also we are so used to corporation taking so many of our data that some are just numbed about it and see it as a losing battle or they don't know how much valuable their information is which you often get the infamous "I got nothing to hide" BS.

I have got few my friends to use Signal when I was about to delete my Instagram. Still in contact with them which is a small victory for me.

Because on every occasion – at least in the case of Signal – they tried to switch, it was a far inferior experience for them, and the leadership behind the app/service took such puritanical decisions that it became evident that the ideology was more important than the people those tools were supposed to help/protect. I don't even bother asking my friends now. In fact, now, for me as well, those (Signal, Matrix, etc.) are just things collecting dust on my spare phone.

People don't just stop using an app until there's very little activity.

Getting people to use a new app, especially one they have little activity on is inconvenient, especially if you're already checking WhatsApp, wechat, signal, telegram, LINE, Zalo, and discord because you have to many different friend groups.

Yes, I understand. The annoying thing is that you end up with two or more apps for the same purpose. Mid-term, I think the only way to go is to go cold turkey at some moment, but it will costs you some friends and family contacts.

So like, this is always seemingly done from a content CONSUMER point of view.

How can we provide content creators a safety net whom we as fans enjoy their content but said artists need to have their name and face out in the open? Particularly music artists/DJs/independent artists/etc?

I swear, anyone wanting privacy, just start calling yourself an artist and boom suddenly nobody can find any information about you! You don't even have to be serious about it, just take a crayola to a bar napkin... /s

Because their other friends are on them, and the celebrities they follow.

Because lot of people just either don't care, are too lazy to switch, or the vast majority of their friends and family still use the apps.

In addition, they may feel like they are losing out on something, especially for Instagram where a large portion of the population uses regularly.

Yeah well imagine what it is when you are old yourself… having a majority of like aged friends and even older family… no one is ever leaving FB before they are ded :-/

Chasing the hot new app that was created by some one-person dev team for "privacy" reasons is a little like chasing amy. You are looking for an ideal app that doesn't exist, so you can't really suggest a better alternative. Instead you are just nagging people for using discord or imessage even though those apps are perfectly fine for 99% of people. Even privacy focused people. imessaage specifically is great for privacy and unless you have strong evidence of an apple installed backdoor for the p2p imessage encryption I'd question why your are against it.

I tried to get friends to use Signal. It's hard because it's a new app they e never used. One flat out refuses to use anything other than SMS and one messaging app to avoid bloat, and the others it's just hard to get buy in when you're the only person they know using it.

Understanding why those platforms are bad is another layer of thought that most people aren't capable or willing to engage in.

Honestly, when or if eu chat control happens I'll just delete all of those applications and never tell anyone, I am not gonna use sms either