[toastal]

The irony is that I have some regrets pushing to move my family to Signal (mostly away from Facebook Messenger and SMS) while I've pondered a dumbphone or a Linux phone due to SIM card+Android/iOS primary device required. On this note though, it seems WhatsApp has pulled out on the upgrade to KaiOS 3.x which hurts accessibility to some folks.

We're not in an ideal spot and self-hosting is more complicated than it should be. That said, there still are options to join public Matrix and XMPP servers that cover the all the above features and would be accessible even on smaller mobile platforms like KaiOS, Capyloon, and all Linuxes.

But also… what if Apple converted iMessage to use one of those open protocols (like the reverse of how Google and Facebook's chats were XMPP until they decided there's more to gain making it proprietary after scaling with FOSS)? Sure [e-mail] would still give them a 'vanity' URL like the color of a message bubble, but at least everyone could participate and have all the same features on a technical level.