Comment by lucb1e

Looks like this Conversations app doesn't do video calling, which kinda makes it a non-competitor compared to all of the alternatives that already exist.

I'm aware of XMPP and tried it out back in the MSN days along with IRC, but then Telegram came along which promised encryption and a much better user experience and until not so long ago I believed that Telegram would 'any day now' come around to implementing encryption proper (as everything ICT, from WhatsApp that sent plaintext messages over tcp/443 to websites around the world after LetsEncrypt, all turned on proper encryption, I didn't think that this self-proclaimed privacy-focused messenger would stay behind). And so I found myself in late 2018 starting to more and more doubt Telegram, but by then there were many competitors and Matrix seemed to be the hot thing that everyone was excited about (and it turned out that it didn't even work properly after you turned on encryption, only the unencrypted form seems to be somewhat reliable). XMPP didn't come to mind as potentially having evolved, perhaps because in the decade since MSN, I don't think I heard of a single person using XMPP for end-to-end encrypted calls. Perhaps it's great but... somehow I doubt that I never heard of a functional free decentralized/federated end-to-end encrypted multi-device user-friendly chat and (video) calling system.