Yeah, the hostility toward F-Droid and wanting to run their app on LineageOS without gapps made me ditch Signal years ago. It seemed like the main gimmick back then was that it was also your SMS app, which IIRC isn't a choice anymore. So what's the draw now? Why would you not use XMPP+OMEMO or Matrix which work everywhere, don't need a phone number (at all, ever), and have free as in freedom clients and servers? It's insane to me.

To put it simply, I need a messenger app to talk to other people. Most people I talk to are not programmers or very tech savvy.

Putting them on Signal requires me to convince them to download an app from the play store, with thr same name. The app is very similar to messenger or whatsapp and they're used to the functionality already. So many of my friends made an account so we can talk.

Anything more involved and they stay on meta's garden. Any successful messaging app needs to prioritize "normies" to get users.