I have gotten my friend group to switch to using Signal for our group chat. It was pretty hard because I'm the only Android user but I ended up convincing them
You need new friends. It's not healthy for you to keep those. And you should be pushing them to Matrix, signal or something similarly private and secure, not telegram.
Signal sucks, a lot. Try using their "privacy first" service with a VPN. You literally need so solve a captcha on every new chat you start.
There is no official FOSS client. You can use Twinhelix' Signal-FOSS which works great. I recommend using Molly though, which has more needed features like linking multiple mobile devices (for example using an Android Tablet and a phone, with the full version instead of the uncapable Desktop version).
Signal is still based on phone numbers, which is its biggest strength. But it is a centralized Service, nobody runs a Signal server (apart of the country servers from Signal themselves).
Try SimpleX. It is really great and now has like eveything you need. It is completely anonymous, but can also be different. It gives the users a lot of control, which may not be wanted and confuse people.
Sliding Sync does work fully for me on my Synapse server with Element X clients, it just doesn't support the "regular" version of Element/Element Desktop (yet?) as far as I know.
The culture war is v stupid, yes. But "use signal" is the same as "dont text your friend with a different app at all" with signal dropping sms. They are in a different position that google and apple, so not saying i blame them for dropping, but i did stop using it once it become "another app" instead of how i text.
The thing is... The bubble colors do matter. But people aren't caring about the colors for the right reasons.
The color matters because the color has to do with the security of that message.
Sending a message through the iMessage protocol is more secure than SMS/MMS.
People should care that their messages are secure and private (and they do care, they just don't always realize it or know it yet). Unfortunately, the people behind the whole blue vs. green bubble culture war don't seem to focus on this security aspect, which is actually what/why it matters.
As an Apple investor who would benefit from more iPhone sales, "Buy an iPhone" is not the right response/solution to this problem, despite what Tim Apple says.
Choose open source. Say no to walled gardens.
Use—and donate to—Signal.
Greetings from GrapheneOS, as a former iOS and stock Android user.
Nope. I suppose in theory it could, but not necessarily—it'd be up to Apple/Google to make the color decisions regarding that.
The important thing here is that it's not about the colors themselves, but about what the colors signify.
Apple chose blue to denote that the message you're sending is to another Apple device. By default, this Apple-to-Apple message uses the iMessage protocol. If it uses iMessage, then that implies a certain security standard.
Apple also made the deliberate choice to denote non-iMessage texts with green. If it's green, then it's SMS/MMS, you lose iMessage encryption, and other features like reactions.
The colors are not gonna change by default—it's up to them to coordinate what colors are used for what. Apple's not gonna open up iMessage (at least not voluntarily, and we saw how far they'll go with Beeper), so Google can't do anything about that. Which is also why they're pushing so hard to get Apple to adopt RCS.
If Apple does adopt RCS, maybe they'll denote it with purple bubbles, who knows. Then you'd have iMessage as blue, RCS as purple, and SMS/MMS as green.
But again, this is all about what each color signifies in terms of privacy and security.
My solution is to not use iPhone, so that they never have an option of iMessage for me. They will be forced to use non-Apple cross-platform IMs to talk, which they need anyways.