Long gone are the days of Pidgin and co, where you could have whatever contacts on whatever service they used and you could chat with them from your app, fully integrated on your desktop/cli and set up with too much hassle, not needing to run any browser instance, electron stuff or things like that. imho instant messaging now is a complete mess.
Right now I get:
- Matrix - Whatsapp - Telegramm - Signal - Instagram
In one chat app in my phone and desktop.
I did something similar and you can deploy the whole deal on a cheep VM somewhere using https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/t...
It probably took me about 2 hours total to work through the documentation and get everything configured just the way I wanted it, then you just run a couple ansible commands and boop, you have a matrix homeserver + web ui + jitsi meet + bridges to whatever you want.
It's pretty great! It's my goto chat app now.
I have now given up on IM and just email or call people.
Regulators should in my opinion impose that the message app with XX millions users provide an API for interoperability with other services.
The beauty of the Pidgn setup was that any contact was essentially indistinguishable from any other, at least by service. All appeared in the same chat window list, and you spoke to all using the same interface.
It was glorious.