Jan-Lukas ElseThe direction Telegram is going is unsettling to me too. I always preferred this over any others because it was simple and just worked™ on all of my devices. Including my Linux PC. I wish I could name an alternative but what? The usual suspects, Threema and Signal suffer from the same problem: Centralized services.
And Matrix? OMG. I wish I could recommend that but the on-boarding experience – even for tech savy people working in this industry – is the worst. And sadly that’s not even a question of the client used. Each requires a high suffering tolerance from their users. It feels like it has all the right ideas in the most complicated way possible and while I didn’t host any Matrix serves myself I hear they have a very heavy footprint.