While that would perhaps be the best solution in the long run, wouldn't you agree that gains in userbase necessary for growth (or at least sustainability) are predicated upon how good the UX is _currently_ ?
My minimum requirements for personal online communication outside of public web-accessible forums like this one, are open protocol, open source implementations, optional E2EE, independent hosting, client choice, and access to channels on other independently hosted servers. These are non negotiable for building my social graph of communication with family, friends, colleagues, etc.
Communication is a sacred part of the human experience and I will not allow centralized entities to control my primary means of connection to my friends and family.
My options for digital comms are then are limited to email, IRC, XMPP, or Matrix.
Matrix has leaps and bounds the best UX and functionality by this criteria and is what I use for the overwhelming majority of my communications.
Anyone that is exclusively willing to communicate over corpotech disrespects my values for freedom and privacy, and is by extension opting out of being friends with me unless we see each other in person regularly.
9/10 times the people that respect me and want to be friends with me also respect my ethical conviction and create matrix accounts to talk to me if they do not already have one.
Taking back control of the internet will require conviction and I try to lead by example in my social circles. I personally could not give less of a shit if Matrix has feature parity with xyz corpotech as they are not solving the same problem. I also use IRC heavily to talk to many of the best engineers in the world and that is a low UX bar to beat.
That said, as corpotech walled gardens keep screwing their users, more and more hold-outs will come over and new features and improvements will reduce that friction over time.
For now though very few individuals understand the vital importance of digital sovereignty for a citizen controlled society, but governments absolutely get it and do not want people like Zuck controlling their comms, so it is not surprising governments are first in line willing to pay for help switching to Matrix. The people will follow in time.
If you give up on E2EE (which isn't useful on smartphones anyway since the users have so little control over the OS and app distribution) email works, nearly everyone has that. If you use eg jmp.chat you can use email, other people can talk to you over SMS, and you can just pretend all this retarded crap doesn't exist.
In the decade prior to me abandoning cell phones entirely I used E2EE email frequently on Android via OpenKeychain and K-9Mail with a Yubikey.
I did not want to be locked into Google or Apple ecosystems and the ship on a truly FOSS Android device has long sailed, so I ported my number to a VoIP provider and only use PCs now.
To your point -any- E2EE on proprietary platforms like iOS or Android cannot be trusted for high risk comms, so at my infosec job we exclusively use Matrix from QubesOS workstations.
But yes email is normally the go-to fallback except with Gen Z who almost universally refuse to use it having grown up exclusively using corpotech.
Communication is a sacred part of the human experience and I will not allow centralized entities to control my primary means of connection to my friends and family.
My options for digital comms are then are limited to email, IRC, XMPP, or Matrix.
Matrix has leaps and bounds the best UX and functionality by this criteria and is what I use for the overwhelming majority of my communications.
Anyone that is exclusively willing to communicate over corpotech disrespects my values for freedom and privacy, and is by extension opting out of being friends with me unless we see each other in person regularly.
9/10 times the people that respect me and want to be friends with me also respect my ethical conviction and create matrix accounts to talk to me if they do not already have one.
Taking back control of the internet will require conviction and I try to lead by example in my social circles. I personally could not give less of a shit if Matrix has feature parity with xyz corpotech as they are not solving the same problem. I also use IRC heavily to talk to many of the best engineers in the world and that is a low UX bar to beat.
That said, as corpotech walled gardens keep screwing their users, more and more hold-outs will come over and new features and improvements will reduce that friction over time.
For now though very few individuals understand the vital importance of digital sovereignty for a citizen controlled society, but governments absolutely get it and do not want people like Zuck controlling their comms, so it is not surprising governments are first in line willing to pay for help switching to Matrix. The people will follow in time.