Oh interesting, yeah I saw some reference to Signal relying on some kind of Google service. I figure I would want to self-host anything I was serious about. It also looks like these things do video chat, so they’re much more elaborate (perhaps unnecessarily) than IRC, which is text-only. I’ve never used Whatsapp and am not even sure what it is, except that for a while I confused it with Instagram.

I’ve installed GNU Jami and that seems like enough for video chat? I just haven’t had occasion to actually use it. I’m not a video guy and frankly am usually happy with email. PGP from the 1980s still works fine, if anyone cares.