I am really fed up with WhatsApp (closed source, jurisdiction that may impose backdoors soon)
I would even try to convince friends and family to move to something else but to what?
Signal so far has been the obvious choice but the fear that they may impose backdoors becomes more and more concrete.
Threema seems great! But they want 3€ and there is no chance in hell that my friends and family would pay it.
I saw a bunch of options on https://european-alternatives.eu/category/instant-messaging-apps but I would like to gather experiences and opinions
I’d go for Matrix, with Element or Schildichat (not the next gen versions for now) as clients. It’s federated, which means you can choose which instance you want your account to reside on, end to end encrypted, has (video) calls, and some other features you wouldn’t necessarily expect from others like spaces for groups with several group chats, prioritizing conversations (low, normal, high / favorite) and threads inside a conversation.
fluffychat is another decent client worth trying.