A lot of those people had actually installed Signal. I had convinced them. When things broke, features were missing I just couldn’t tell them what to do. Never again.
But in the process of trying to bring them to Signal, I actually understood why my friends and family (many of them are from remote villages; educated or barely educated) prefer WhatsApp — because they “can actually use” WhatsApp and connect to others unlike anything else!
You know how big that is? That trumps everything Sugnal has to offer and it doesn’t offer much to begin with. Element/Vector/Riot/or whatever they’ll name it next isn’t even in that league and it’s good it is not even trying to be an usable person to person individual chat app/service.
Though I wish they used Telegram (yeah yeah, E2E is opt-in). It’s just too superior an app! Too good. But they don’t. So WhatsApp it is.
Also element works just fine, especially compared to the massive issues facebook messenger has had over the years.
Xmpp, matrix, and sms are options.
Additionally having a long tail with 30-70% of the users makes it impossible to buy. And you probably don't even have to go that far, just not using element is probably enough to prevent matrix from trying it even if they wanted to (which it's clear they don't because they make it easy to leave).
We don't have to 'leave email' or 'leave tcp/ip' every few years because the TOS requires handing over your firstborn or because http is running experiments to see how many people will commit suicide. The idea is borderline-incoherent.
If you use something because someone is paying to shove it down your throat, you will pay a thousand fold once they win their monopoly.
Mostly to others reading this, but please don't spend effort trying to move people to other walled gardens. This just guarantees you need to do it again and multiplies the effort required to get people to move to a protocol instead.