They’re deporting U.S. citizens now too, and even Native Americans (what the hell???)

Based on what I know, in a nutshell, Signal is centralised and requires phone number (both of which may not be ideal), SimpleX is decentralised (not one central server) and doesn’t require phone number, Jami and Briar are peer-to-peer networks (but this means that both users must have the client running to receive new messages/notifications, which is not ideal). Signal seems to be more audited in terms of security and such compared to the smaller fish (but that’s because it is a much, much bigger fish). For me, I would go with Signal since my threat model isn’t super high, and it’s much easier to get others to switch to it. SimpleX is a decent option if you don’t want to share your phone number I guess, but it’s more obscure and less established compared to Signal (in terms of users and security audits). Jami and Briar don’t seem all that great for the everyday user due to the limitations of the peer-to-peer model (needing both clients running at all times drains battery it seems), but could be decent options if your threat model is super super high

Matrix is another option but is a bit complicated to set up, and unless you know how things work, it can seem quite confusing. It’s more of a Discord competitor with the different communities and rooms.

I set up Radicale first, and never bothered to switch. Also, something about putting all your eggs in one basket.

Another thing, “Navidrome” is a self-hosted spotify alternative (I don’t use it, I just have the MP3s and OGGs stored locally for offline playback!)

Jellyfin is a self-hosted netflix alternative. Where you get the media is up to you…

Personally:

Nextcloud (file backup and so much more, I use it to backup files from my computer. Might explore some of the other features soon)

Immich (image backup, I use it to back up photos from my camera + phone)

Radicale (CalDAV + CardDAV for calendar and contacts sync)

Forgejo (GitHub alternative, and the backend of Codeberg! I use this as a local backup to my git repos in addition with cloud backup with Codeberg. They work nice together, when you set two remotes per git repo)

Vikunja (to-do list syncing, don’t use this anymore as I mostly use Joplin for this now)

Joplin (Markdown editor, supports cloud sync with nextcloud, I use this for both notes and to-dos!)

I used to run ConvertX (to convert any file type, whether it’s document, image, video, etc. Think a self-hosted CloudConvert), but I somehow messed up the user permissions and couldn’t log in (100% user error on my part), so I didn’t bother.