I use tuta mail and tuta calendar for mail and calendar, Vivaldi as browser on laptop, and Firefox on android. Bitwarden as password manager and bitwarden auth as 2fa. Use obsidian for notes and appstore is aurora store and droidify, I use archlinux. And for "cloud" storage, actually a backup I use This USB drive not cloud Buf works for me. Still kinda dependent on proprietary messaging platforms, but I have 1 friend on signal. Also I am trying to replace YouTube with fmhy.net not exactly YouTube alternative, but has so many resources for free to study, educate myself, or just watch something out of amusement.
i haven't said a word about insisting on signal, or any app in particular, and i've never done so. what's extra hilarious is what i actually did is i gave my phone number and email out to everyone so that they don't need to install or register something new to contact me. that was the "app preference" that i "set an ultimatum" for, the other things everyone already has and uses to communicate with other people every single day. whenever i reached out, and i made sure to do so regularly, they would just complain that i wasn't on facebook. so like no, but thanks for making sweeping assumptions about my personal irl relationships based on a few paragraphs on the internet you clearly didn't read.
my point has been, this entire time, that if someone won't communicate with you outside of a particular app, on the same device, using the capabilities that are a prerequisite to register for these apps; you don't have a real relationship with that person. if that makes you feel things then those feelings are yours to examine and act on as you wish.
taking cheap personal shots in the hope that you'll make me as upset as you are, as you beat your strawman, zero in on me and my relationship with my family in particular, and then call me irritable and incapable is as audacious as it is hilarious and pathetic. please keep trying to make me upset so you can justify your own shitty behavior because someone had an opinion that made you uncomfortable.
(eta the hilarious twist is they all have signal installed with zero prompting on my part, the entire divide on apps was strictly about facebook and its use being mandatory for me to hear from them)