I think we all draw a line between privacy and convenience and I think I found mine and settled into a comfort zone of sorts. I use Fedora 38. My browser is Mozilla Firefox with it's "strict" setting. uBlock origin and uMatrix. When I need/want to use a site that doesn't work due to blocked connections I relax the restrictions in uMatrix or temporarily disable it entirely if I get frustrated or I'm in a hurry. I watch videos on YouTube. Don't use social media, but I do use Facebook messenger (although I prefer to use Signal with the handful of people I can). I use a Xiaomi phone with custom ad blocking DNS (I'd like to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS someday). I look for an app on F-Droid first, but install it through Google Play if I can't find what I need there. I use Qwant and DuckDuckGo. I use ReVanced. I do not use a VPN. I think that's all the relevant information. My question is: how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me? Are there any suggestions you would have for a person like me that wouldn't sacrifice too much convenience?
Signal will force you into using an Android or iOS mobile device—no alternatives—and you couldn’t have 2 Android devices (like a tablet, e-reader). You are forced to have a SIM card which gives away part of your identity. Servers are centralized & closed-source (closed for 2 years, rewritten history)—so did the NSA force in a backdoor? …We may never know. On Android, by default notifications are sent thru Google Service’s Firebase (fork Molly supports UnifiedPush now tho). The ToS is questionable with “don’t break the law” language.
Your ideal chat would be free software, P2P or federated+self-hostable servers, E2EE, & the only required personal info you share is your account ID (no phone or email).
You’d think Matrix fits the bill, but its high system requirements (especially storage) & majority Matrix.org mean defacto centralization around an org that controls the spec, the largest server, reference server, & most popular client.
What you are looking for is good ol’ XMPP with OMEMO or PGP set to required in all clients. Its server options run on a toaster, has years of smart engineering & open governance guiding the project, & being extensible by nature, means it’s not purely limited to chat/conferencing. XMPP appears to be the common chat option on the dark web for a reason. You can use gateways to puppet accounts on these untrustworthy networks too (such as messlidger to puppet Facebook Messenger is needed, but also Signal, Telegram, etc.).
Alternatively, Briar & its ilk are gotos, but P2P has some downsides (brains your battery hard on Android).
XMPP sounds like a good idea, however, switching to Signal and convincing the 3 contacts I have there to switch as well wasn't very easy and I don't think I could pull it off again in the near future.
Comrade, I have the exact same issue with family :(