Basically Signal but without the weakness of a phone number & runs on a Tor-like network. It's still a work-in-progress thing but you CAN use it to send messages

Nah, that would be Matrix, XMPP, DeltaChat or SimpleX

Ya it’d be better if it didn’t require a phone number but it’s a solid start as it’s build up a user base over the past decade. Matrix is good but I know far less people that use it and it’ll be a long time of growing with nerdy/geeky communities before it starts getting more mainstream users

Have a look here: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html

I like the comparison and prefer simplex as an replacement to Signal in the Future.
Self hosted Matrix Servers are a good idea aswell if you have the money and knowledge.

Matrix still has it's problems. All the meta data is still saved on every server permanently.

There is still space to improve from there.

By features, yes. By 10 miles.

Privacy? It isn't driving anymore at this point.

any proofs?

Thats a problem with silos (where one owner hosts all the servers) in general. You will have to switch the entire ecosystem once the inevitable enshitification sets in. It's a good idea to switch to something open source and federated (where many different non profit organisations and even self hosting individuals host many different servers).
That way you can migrate your history and contacts to another server of necessary but never have to switch the ecosystem again. Think it how email works, it's the best known federated system. If you don't like you email provider anymore you can just chose another one and still keep your contacts and messages on a client like Thunderbird forever.
Xmpp and matrix are the hottest candidates in my opinion, but you can check the messenger matrix that was linked in a comment above to see what suits you best.

Signal is on F-Droid.

Most of the alternatives mentioned have such low adoption that they aren't truly viable options yet - no matter how much we wish otherwise.

And I say that not as a critic - I actually use Matrix, XMPP, and Jitsi myself. But guess how many of my friends, family, or colleagues are on them?

Exactly.

That’s why I recommend Signal. At least there, people are likely to find folks they already know.

You can save any media you care about. And Signal can backup your chats if that history is important to you.

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/

To get encryption one must start a "secret chat". It's an opt-in! Regular users will not even know the option exists, that's how well hidden it is.

Regular chats? Plainly readable on the server.

It used to function as a fallback SMS/MMS messenger (like how iMessage does) but when Google started moving to convert Android from SMS/MMS to RCS Signal made the hard decision to cut the fallback functionality rather than follow Google's new framework.

I personally hope once the dust settles Signal designs a RCS engine and restores the fallback functionality.

Sure, but if I switch from Signal to another potentially better messaging app down the line my chat history will get fragmented

Jami*

Matrix isn’t necessarily p2p

Well said, the problem really is that Signal isn't federated. I'm keeping an eye on Matrix for now.

Can't find it though

No. XMPP would be the best choice.

And it would have as much spam as email.

Yeah killing the sms function was basically a deal breaker for me, no matter how much I tried I could only get three people to use Signal, the rest were all sms. When the sms feature was removed 2 of the 3 dropped Signal completely, so now the only person I know who still uses it is my mom and even she still flips back and forth between Signal and Google messages when texting me.

I still have Signal on my phone and suggest it people when they ask how to contact me, but everyone just wants to text my phone number.