[defaultprimate]

Requiring a phone number is literally my only complaint about Signal, I used to just use a Google Voice number but then I learned about TextNow and have been migrating away from Google as much as possible

https://www.textnow.com/how-it-works

[zaik]

My other complaint is that it's just another walled garden.

[onychomys]

That's true of all messaging apps besides base text messages, though, isn't it? It's not like I can send a message on facebook messenger to somebody who reads it in telegram.

[Tepix]

RCS / JOIN is an open standard, but it lacks important features like E2E

[kitkat_new]

you don't seem to know Matrix and XMPP

[defaultprimate]

It's very difficult not to be if you want truly secure messaging.

It seems unlikely that big tech and telecom corporations, whose lifeblood is personal data harvesting, or government, with surveillance states becoming the global norm, are going to agree to adopt a genuinely secure end to end encrypted messaging standard or protocol on the best devices ever to facilitate their practices.

[barbazoo]

I was able to use a US number from Twilio for that purpose. Interestingly, the Canadian numbers I tried didn't work.