So, with Conversations I'm locked into a single client on a single platform. Yay, XMPP :-/ (There's no desktop client I'm aware of that supports Conversations' features).

Oh, and I can have that only if I go through the trouble of setting up all the moving pieces myself. Because I really really really want to spend my time picking which flavour of end-to-end encryption to use (in which clients?) and how to make sure that a server-side searchable archive exists (accessible through which client??) or that media and files reach even offline clients (which clients???) etc.

Server-wise you want either ejabberd or prosody for the latest features. Yes, you need to set up a server once and read some docs, as with every self-hosted service. And if you don't care about encryption enough to read about it you can just enforce TLS for client-to-server and server-to-server connections. On the desktop, Gajim (win/linux/bsd/mac) supports all of the XEPs I mentioned. There are clients for iOS too but I don't know how they work as I don't own any Apple products.

Of course, if you'd rather spend money than time hoping that your provider won't have your conversations stolen, misused or disappear with them that's your prerogative too.

> You need to set up

> clients for iOS too [nope, no clients beyond the very basic abandoned ones — dmitriid]

So.... Why would I want any of that? To feel "not-normal" "above average", as this entire thread seems to imply?

> stolen misused yada yada

Let's leave these scary strories to the kids, shall we? We're supposed to be all grown ups here.