Reposting my reply from another thread, just to keep people informed:

Keep in mind everyone that Stoat still doesn’t currently protect it’s users information and is centralized. It doesn’t use encryption but it is very seamless. You can host your own Stoat instance but it doesn’t communicate with the main one. The devs have said they plan to add more security features in the future yet still don’t make it a priority. The host of Stoat should be able to see everyone’s messages, including in DM’s, due to the lack of E2E encryption. Once they add more security features I imagine they will be much more popular in general.