I find that Privacyguides always has recommendations worth following: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/

Of these, https://simplex.chat/ seems the most promising, thanks to a level of decentralization.

Wire. Open source, self hostable

> Is there an alternative?

Decentralized protocols

Threema? https://threema.ch/en

Despite Swiss "neutrality", it is also a member or E.U. and must comply with GDPR (and thusly the new EU rules)

EDIT: Switzerland is not a member of E.U.

I expect applies to any app on a phone that is registered in the EU. If you wanted to and were able to buy a Swiss phone with Swiss number you might be okay.

Developers could start to employ software activism and dis-allow licenses for software they develop by European governments citing the reasons.

Perhaps Signal can deploy a version for Europe that is licensed for use only by governments and scans the hell out of them looking for corruption using AI.

what

switzerland is NOT in EU

Well, I goofed. Nonetheless, Threema is claiming GDPR-complaince:

Excerpt from their main web page:

Threema is 100% Swiss Made, hosts its own servers in Switzerland*, and, unlike US services (which are subject to the CLOUD Act, for example), it is fully GDPR-compliant.

GDPR is about not storing information about people without their consent and has nothing to do with the encryption legislation.

Looks like he goofed twice...

Looks like I did.

(Need more coffee)

Yes, everyone wanting to serve clients in the eu (even if they are on vacation in non eu) must comply with the gdpr; this article however is not related to the gdpr though.

Make no mistake I would never use Threema, and "made in switzerland" is usually just putting lipstick on a pig; the one time someone seriously looked into Threema it was full of weird decisions, if I remember correctly

Still GDPR is unrelated to what we are talking about

GDPR doesn’t mean you follow “new EU rules”.

It just means you only store the data you need, you track how the data is used, and you allow data subjects the possibility to modify/remove said data.

simplex.chat fits my needs and doesn't require a phone number or even email address.

Session is another option http://getsession.org

I second Session though for Android users I always recommend Briar primarily, if to fill simple text and photo messaging needs.

This is short sighted.

They poke a hole in signal and all secure messaging /communication is screwed. it wont matter what "other" product you use.

You could always roll your own protocol that you use to interface with contacts, basically replicating Signal's algo. The gov wouldn't be able to stop that.

The Signal client and (irregularly) the server are published as open source. You can run your own Signal instance. If you want to complicate your life, of course.

There is an easier way - going with a selfhostable, federated solution. And at least XMPP is now commonly used with an encryption protocol that is based on Signal's.

DeltaChat.