so realistically, what are the options regarding “chat apps/protocols” people are actually using or otherwise like

@nay i use xmpp and matrix a fair but eith discord thrown in, cuz discord, but yeah

@ezio i like xmpp but i have exactly 3 People added there (including you) and it’s not really used anyways

matrix… well, https://mice.tel/notes/a79c9uthksau07yo
(and i have nobody there these days)

@nay i straight up forgor i had u on xmpp lmao

@nay if decentralized then matrix (terrible), xmpp (also bad), simplex (ran by an insane person). signal and discord ig

@nay I use (and self-host) XMPP, IRC, Matrix, and email.

I hate Matrix (because of very high server resource usage and everything being incomplete or broken in some way) but unfortunately other people use it and I host a heisenbridge to an IRC channel (which is also broken because I use conduit and for some reason heisenbridge can't get displaynames after being restarted if you're using conduit).

I much prefer XMPP and got my parents to use it.

@nay XMPP for chatting with free software nerdoes ( 1 person literally, if you have one DM yor address) and **brrrrm * platforms like Discord & Telegram for other ppl in my case