> That people can't login to phone apps?

Probably that they don't bother to have another chat app just for a few people.

A older family member has WhatsUp and Signal and gets sometimes confused. I have WhatsUp, signal, telegram, discord, meta messenger and would be .. hesitant to install an IRC client for like 3 people.

Whatsapp wins because it doesn't require a username and password, that's too complex for many people

> wins because it doesn't require a username and password

And lose because you can't give it to a kid that doesn't have a mobile phone number.

I have shared custody of my daughter and we communicate via xmpp on a tablet they carry over there when they spend a week at their mother's.

True, but I mean wins in a global "it's now the default platform for most people in the world" sense.

Yes. People install a handful of known apps and that's it. You would never convince any of my friends or family to install this. In fact, I wouldn't either.

The reason that most people don't want another chat app is not just because of the initial work. Every chat app adds a mental overhead for some activities.

Want to find that recipe that you remember that some person shared with you a while back? Now you have to look through four different apps.

And the overhead grows quite fast as you add apps.

Your incredulous attitude is naive. Yes, people don’t want to have yet another increasingly niche chat app to communicate with just a few people.

yeah, people definitely don't want to switch to use another app to chat. Is that too hard to understand?