I researched this a little while ago. The new protocol is licensed by Google and has not been released to the public. Also, unless everyone in the middle supports the protocol, messages are routed through Google’s network.

I settled on Signal for people who will switch and SMS for the rest. I do plug Signal when I can, like sending images between Apple & Android are degraded, but not on Signal.

What’s the deal with VPNs? I noticed many instances don’t work over VPN but didn’t know where to ask.

I do on all my devices that can as a matter of practice, not for any real threat. I’m interested to learn about how to set it up and use it on a daily basis including how to do system recoveries. I guess it’s largely academic.

Once I switched to linux as my daily driver, I didn’t have a need to do piracy anymore since all the software I need is FOSS.

You’re both right. I’d do the same to jump ship before the enshitification sets in. Often, I’ve seen how innocuous policy and feature changes creep in and before you know it, the switching costs are too high.

I had an app on my phone and one day they removed the export function. I only used it for backing up my data but when they raised rates and started slamming with ads, I wanted to leave but could not take my data with me. I ended to just uninstalling and starring over elsewhere.

Also, this is exactly what happened to reddit. They cut the api first so it was harder to take your communities and saved stuff with you.

Do you think this would make enough people mad enough to get their representatives to do something about it?