[LordAtlas]

> - terribly slow synchronization between phone and Desktop, catching up on a few hundred messages takes minutes

I agree with everything you wrote. In principle, I'd like to support Signal but their UX is terrible for such things. Tried using it for a group and it was so painful. My phone was constantly warning me about it chewing up battery, and message sync between the desktop app was like it was using a 14.4K modem from 1994. I simply could not use it meaningfully for group messaging. Ultimately we went back to Whatsapp. But hey, at least they fixed the Fisher Price background colours for group messages.

Here in India, everyone uses Whatsapp. There was a brief time during the Whatsapp terms of service brouhaha that a bunch of people I know said they'd move to Signal, and they've all slowly moved back to Whatsapp because that's what everyone in the country uses. Seriously, it's practically infrastructure here.