Scattered Across Messengers

For the past years I have only used WhatsApp and Telegram for messaging. Surely also Discord, Skype, Team Speak and Zoom for certain discussion groups, but not genereal messaging. Most people use WhatsApp, and few use Telegram and insist that it is the better messenger. I still do not like Telegram for its home-grown cryptography, trusted-server design and opt-in end-to-end-encryption. A relative had a security incident on Telegram, apparently somebody was reading all the chats and searched for login credentials that were sent to somebody else. In the end the person ditched Telegram as they did not feel secure on it any more.

But then the family group on Telegram did not work any more. WhatsApp is not an option because another person despises Facebook and does not want to share any data with them. We eventually agreed on the Signal messenger. I have installed this on my phone an laptop, and the family group was opened up there.

Now I have three messengers, and I cannot really get rid of any of them because I have people I cannot reach otherwise. Some do not use WhatsApp due to privacy concerns, some do not use Telegram due to security concerns, and most do not use either Telegram or Signal Messenger because they don't have many contacts on it. Most people use only WhatsApp, few use only Telegram. And others have Facebook Messenger, which I do not use.

Back when AIM, ICQ, MSN, YIM where still a thing, I would just have the multi messenger Miranda IM, an account on each and just have all contacts on one piece. This is not possible with the current messengers. There is no federation, no common standard. Basically it is a feudalism like situation where one picks the lord (or multiple ones), but all conversations and groups stay with that lord. I do hate to put all eggs into one basket, at least in principle. But I hate to have multiple messengers in parallel even more. At this point I'd really just have WhatsApp for everything and not bother with all the ideosyncrasies of the individual apps any more.