the state of Instant Messaging in 2025:

• have you gotten nitro yet? please?? come on, we even give you 1-day trials if you're doing some quests :3
• have you gotten premium yet? please ​ oh and we let problematic people and governments thrive on our platform if you don't mind :3
• the ones who accidentally leaked your phone number for a while (during the initial introductory phase of usernames, that has since been patched now) while also limiting you to 5 paired devices, while also requiring a working camera on the old(!!) device when you're transferring chats on iOS
• *** DecryptionError: Unable to decrypt complaints about this messenger. ***
• get a bouncer or you're out of luck (in terms of message history).
• you'd have to trust a bunch of nerds to keep the servers up and running (and we won't save chat history unless you're using a specific version of a specific client for one specific protocol, otherwise you're out of luck).
• look, we took email and turned that into an IM! isn't that great? :3 oh and you should look into setting up our own email server solution (or just use our own servers) instead of using your already-existing mail server since those might rate-limit you heavily-
• get an iDevice or you're out.
• get an Android phone or you're out.
• throw money at us for a one-time purchase tied to either apple, google or our own licensing system (you can't transfer between them at all!) or you're out. oh and we're not that open source either.

IMs who haven't made it onto the list: XMPP, Revolt, Polyphony