There are no reasonable alternatives to signal. Investing in signal despite reduction of ease-of-use in exchange for a better privacy stance is probably the best thing you can do for privacy. Messengers benefit greatly from the network effect. Every person who refuses to use other platforms is a person who brings others to the messenger.
Telegram is both owned by Russians and run out of an oppressive country.
Apple has shown a desire to scan all your stuff. Google is google.
Facebook/whatsapp are obviously corrupted by corporate interests and un-trustable.
LINE/Kakao/WeChat/etc probably aren't much different than FB.
Matrix is not operationalized and they have a security/privacy model that is a bit too complex for me. I'll start believing there might be something to matrix once it's referred to as element (how people use it) rather than the protocol (said affectionately: what nerds care about).
Signal is the lowest effort required to use app that does the right thing. Signal optimizes for low effort and that is a major competitive advantage. Signal is still the best.
Forcing people to use a different app for non private messaging is good from a security and privacy point of view. Expectation: Using signal is private. Reality: Using SMS through signal is not private. This change makes expectations better match reality.