@[email protected] I've not heard of anyone who does "not like" it? Many don't know about it maybe. I can't think of anything I've seen against it as it ticks most of the boxes for excellent privacy and has been very usable for me.

Simple answer to the question so far as I can see: in order to connect with someone, you have to video conference with them and show them a code. So the anonymity is only as anonymous as the video conference you use to do that. All of the benefits it claims are merely an illusion.

I liked the fact that it is really easy to self-host.

I tried it with friends on discord and in 10min I had a vps with a server running.

Are chats synced with the mobile and desktop clients?

Never tried it. But I use Element, which is based on the Matrix protocol.

SimpleX is great but not ready for prime time.

I use it as a copy paste buffer on my different devices. I run into issues with sending media sometimes.

Adding people at a distance is a huge pain in the ass with long codes, that needs a solution before the app can be used by normal people.

After Signal dropped SMS support, most of my friends jumped ship. No way they're using this.

My friends barely want to use Signal. There's no chance they're using something else.

What does their multi-device story look like? Can I use one identity/account on multiple devices, with synced read state etc?

Edit: Looks like it's being worked on. I don't want to use a messenger without this feature anymore, but I'll give SimpleX another look once it's done.

In F-Droid, after disabling all anti-features, SimpleX still is listed. Signal never will be due to connecting to GCM or Firebase. Molly is an improvement for Signal but not for untrackable privacy like SimpleX from using a different ID with each individual SimpleX contact.