Was that the punch in the face, or was it all the morons intentionally misinterpreting this argument and saying "but why would u want to send nonsecure messages are you aware SMS isn't secure it's like so insecure to send SMS bro it's not secure it's like literally a security risk bro SMS isn't secure at all and also are you aware SMS security is poor"

Same here. It's pretty frustrating.

My family still uses it vs texting. We like the video calls as well. :)

Well, yes. But when all your friends are already on Facebook Messenger, good luck getting them to install Signal only to talk with you. Network effects are important; a messaging app has no use when you have nobody to message on the app. Supporting SMS was taking advantage of its network effect, and I don't think their network was big enough to be self-sustaining for most users (it wasn't in my case, my only contact in there is my wife).

I don't think you understand why current servers operate the way they do.

Matrix server implementations function on the idea that your data lives in the server, so of course it needs that information (who is here, who is talking to whom) - or else, as an example, if you lost your devices you wouldn't be able to recover your info (like on Signal).

I don't want Signal's Peer-to-Peer solution. I own my server, so I'm okay with keeping my own metadata. I want my communications with others to be encrypted, but recoverable if I lose access to my devices.

I think what you want is a Peer to Peer encrypted solution, which Matrix is working on, but isn't available yet.

Follow this site for info on Matrix's progress in that space: https://arewep2pyet.com/ What you're looking for is info on Pinecone.

TLDR: poop wants a peer-to-peer encrypted network, Matrix is not that (yet).

Further reading:

Matrix's architecture today means that the servers can see who their users are talking to, and when - but not what (assuming it's end-to-end encrypted). Just like a PGP mail service like Protonmail. Because Matrix stores conversation history on the server (unlike Signal) so you can get at it when from multiple logins, you end up with that metadata stored on the server.

We're fixing this by working on P2P Matrix (as per the blog post - it's one of the main initiatives that the funding is going towards). https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix explains how P2P addresses the metadata problem.

(...)

Yes it is. But there are also unencrypted chats/rooms

Maybe, but if I want to privately talk to randos from the internet, then using my phone number like with Signal is a no-go from the start. Threema is paid and only partially open source.

Session is fully decentralised and while you can think of crypto whatever, at least it gives people the incentive to run nodes, unlike Tor where the incentives are all over the place, or centralised messengers which are fully reliant on one entity.

Try Matrix or XMPP.