Reding the link now " The reason the US government hasn’t tried to block or hinder Signal, is because it’s satisfied with the amount of information Signal can provide to it." Well the metadata of who is contacting who can be acquired by other means. CIA also like to have secure tools. Just like you can argue the CIA connection in the TOR case . It doesn’t mean backdoors and so on.

Centralisation argument sure, but that issue will always be there at some level, even for matrix.

Phonenumber discovarability argument is no longer correct as it is possible to use signal and not disclosing it to contacts, but yes still to signal.

I have a signal account with a fake number so that is an option as well, if even more work than matrix process.

There is also desktop clients for both.

Use signal and matrix. Telegram is as people pointed out usually unencrypted. Also unverifieble in its code . Signal is easy uses but phonenumbers ( you can register a fake one however) but always EE2E. Matrix does not require a number at all. But definatly is a bit harder to get started with and are therefore harder to get your contact to use it.

Google doesnt make the big bucks on phonesales. Even buying a new ( I refurbish mine myself) and putting GOS on it is worse for Google than buying anything else and run it with gapps.