jherazob

This advice is not directly related to that, this is the same advice given by security-oriented organizations all over to compensate with people being people

I like Snikket as a solution to this

Snikket is an attempt to solve the XMPP issues, or at least to reduce them, single all-in-one XMPP server distro and clients across platforms, and since it's self-hosted no one should get their hands on your data (in normal circumstances).

That said, the saying goes "Perfect is the enemy of Good". Just because a solution is not perfect doesn't make it unusable, any of those options you mention full of problems are a helluva better than FB Messenger or plain SMS for example. Depending on your threat model they might be more than enough.

They do, one with them at the top

Have you seen an XMPP setup these days that doesn't have installed all the extra stuff to allow encryption, voice and a lot of other bells and whistles?

What's the "best practices" for DNS these days besides running your own local service?

They bought an ads company AFTER this person took the reins

Not customers, users, otherwise they'll start paywalling features

https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/

Only 42?

First AI and now freaking Bitcoin...