Freedom Is For Me - Instant Messaging
Introduction
Communication is a vital aspect of our everyday lives, whether it is digital or not. However, when dealing with communications digitally it is incredibly important to be careful of what you use to communicate. Here I will discuss and list several pieces of secure, private, and FOSS instant messaging software, for a wide variety of devices. I will also provide links to the software's webpage, and will try to list all the pros and cons, so you can make the best choice possible.
Signal
Signal is a private messenger for Android, IOS (Apple products), and desktop. It uses open source end-to-end encryption, and doesn't store any data on its users except for your phone number, and the date that you started using it. Signal has been subpoenad multiple times, and they publish the subpoena request, and their response every time it happens. You can read all about it on their site. Signal is a very good messenging service and I would highly reccomend it to anybody looking for a private messenger. It is very reliable and has a great user interface. Signal is open source, and as a result there are lots of forks (Pieces of software based off of the code of another program) of it, some of which I would say are more secure and private. In general though, it is a very good piece of software, and very trustworthy and reliable.
Session
Session is a more private fork of Signal, available on IOS, Android, and desktop. In order to prevent censorship it routes all communications through their onion network. Like Signal all messages are end-to-end encrypted, and the program itself is open source. I personally use this messenger, and find it to have a very good user interface. Session has very good security, as instead of signing up for an account, you download the application, and you are given an id, and a recovery phrase which you can use to access your account from other devices, and functions as your password. In general I think that Session is a very good instant messaging application. It has a great user interface, it is open source, it is very private, and it is very secure. It works very well, and has lots of features. The only real downside is that you have to convince people to use it if you want to chat with them on it. Besides that it also has group messaging, and chat rooms, all of which are completely end-to-end encrypted, and routed through an onion network. I would reccommend this to anybody, and I think that it is probably the most secure messaging application I will talk about on this page.
Briar
Briar is an open source peer to peer (peer to peer, or p2p, is when instead of sending the message to a server, and then the server giving it to the other device, the devices communicate directly with each other) messenger for Android, there is however a beta desktop version for Windows and Linux. This messenger is completetly end-to-end encrypted, while being able to communicate via p2p, it also has the option to route traffic through an onion network. It is also designed to be able to work over bluetooth and WiFi, so in the event of the internet going out you are still able to communicate with other briar users within a decent range. Briar is a very good messenger, and is highly private and secure. It is designed to resist censorship and surveilance, and does quite a good job at that. There are a few difficulties with it however. At the moment, it is for Android, as the although there is a beta desktop version available, there are significantly less features on it. The user interface can be a little confusing if you are only used to having used text messages, but can be picked up quickly. It can be a little tricky to convicne people to download, and use it though. Briar is a very secure and private messenger, and I would highly recommend it.
Matrix
Matrix is an open-source and decentralised communication platform. Matrix itself is merely an encrypted protocol, that allows for secure communication. In order to use it you have to get a Matrix client, such as Element. There is a list of clients on Matrix's website, but my personal recommendaton would be the Cinny client. It also supports rooms, either public or private, allowing it to also funciton as a Discord replacement. You do need an account to register, but registration can be done through TOR, and with disposable emails. I would absolutely recommend Matrix as either a private and encrypted instant messaging app, or for some sort of private community application. I would, however, more recommend it for the community application as it is very robust as when compared to some of the other room features on platforms on this list.