You're right I never stated my requirements anywhere. Ideally I would want something that: - works (with push notifs and instant delivery and file transfer) -

You're right I never stated my requirements anywhere. Ideally I would want something that: - works (with push notifs and instant delivery and file transfer) - is secure (ideally E2EE that's established and maintained, if I control the server just TLS might suffice although it's probably still safer to push trust to the edge) - is Free/Open Source all the way through - is self-hostable in a managable way (I have some but not a lot of knowledge in running and administering services and I'd rather not shoot myself in the foot with something extremely complicated.) Bonus points if there's service offerings I can fall back to. - isn't bound to phones or phone numbers SMS doesn't fulfill these requirements, I simply use it because it's the "universe default" in terms of instant messaging. And I assume telcoms are so regulated that they technically could but legally aren't allowed to spy on me. For that I had a glance at my national telcom laws and while I'm not a lawyer it certainly sounded like they aren't allowed to spy on me unless I'm already in legal trouble.