For servers, kolektiva.social might be the best bet right now

Regarding servers, I think the best one with signups available right now is kolektiva.social. I myself am on a bog-standard big server, and things there feel fine enough moderation-wise too. So don't worry too much about your choice, you can move your account pretty easily. Just find something that feels reliable to start off with.

Matrix doesn't really have a good voicechat experience unless you want a Zoom group call kinda thing. Revolt is more of a direct Discord alternative.

The guides after this page should explain it better than I could - you basically have to just be able to get into the settings, so you have to go through any Google Android prompts before you can

Yeah

I don't believe either support it - you should aim for a phone with official support, and only Pixels are supported by Calyx and Graphene

Imo Graphene is better, but Calyx might be a little more approachable. Both are good though!

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Ironically, Google Pixels have the best privacy-respecting custom ROM support

https://grapheneos.org/ https://calyxos.org/

I switched about a year ago, and I'm thriving in it now! It's really powerful; I basically only use it.

I definitely wouldn't recommend it to just anyone though. They have to be either technical or show interest about it first. There's a lot of compromises and/or complications that arise when you want to do some pretty basic things sometimes. I could ramble about this for a while. I believe this will get much better in the next years though, as things 'just work' a lot more. Maybe in a decade or so.

Linux definitely has a bright future, though. Love it for its privacy benefits and ewaste reducing abilities (it can resurrect nearly any old computer). I love that I can game with ease on it now. I love that stuff like the Steam Deck is coming out - it shows all the cool stuff you can do with Linux-based OSes, and Steam OS looks promising for Linux beginners.

Matrix/Element isn't into crypto, but it leaks metadata and surveillance basically relies mainly on metadata anyway. Still, it's my favorite alternative despite the metadata thing because it's not sus and you don't need to give your phone number for it

Session is into crypto, but doesn't require a phone number and maybe doesn't leak metadata

Briar is limited

Signal has the best user experience out of all of them

HAHAHAHA

We're in good hands

absolutely, i definitely don't want to downplay that. just using the answers here as a frame of reference

gosh darn it

Throwback to lib me registering for this site very early on in its existence, thinking the FrEe mArkEtpLacE Of idEaS would make it good. I was probably the only liberal on the site

Vaping would negatively affect your lungs though, right? That's my worry about the smoking/vaping route

<3

fair

The about section, and the one where they talk about being censored - but it's been a while since I looked at it, so I'd recommend digging into it to judge for yourself

Thanks for linking this article, first good points against them that I've seen

I'm kinda curious about their other site though (they mention writing another article about ProtonMail in the blog post). I'm getting some crank vibes from the articles. The way ProtonMail loves taking down random blog posts criticizing them is suspicious, though.