[CactusRocket]

I don't really use Whatsapp, or any IM client on my phone, but do have a few friends use Telegram so I'm using it on my computer. We're looking at alternatives. We tried out Signal, and that feels extremely basic and spartan, like old ICQ or AIM. We tried Matrix (with the Element client) and it feels much more featureful and modern. And the federated aspect feels much better than the centralized nature of Signal.

Can you explain a bit more about where you feel the complication comes from?

This group of friends are mostly not very technical. They were able to create an account on matrix.org perfectly fine. They felt a bit strange that they had to pick a username "like in the past" and not use their phone number. But at the same time they felt pretty nice not giving away their phone number to a foreign company/organization.