To be honest, everything that happened in the last month or so gave me a royally good kick in the ass to do the shit I've putting off for a long time, 2025 will very much be the year of "Fuck it, we ball" at least for me.

This is true and I do apologize for having slipped up on this. I did a bit more research and came across this pretty decent read up on this github repo by Dessalines: why_not_signal.md that covers this issue in much better detail and provides alternatives. The only one I'm familiar with outside of Signal is Matrix which can be self hosted giving you a lot of leeway in protecting your own data and only requires you to use an email of which you can use a burner email to avoid connecting your identity to anything.

Reader View should work on most websites that block you from reading with popups. Heres the summary: Use Signal which is End to End encrypted to communicate instead of using your built in phone apps to communicate via phone calls and text messages. WhatsApp and appearently FaceTime are recommended for communicating but I personally wouldnt trust those ~~two~~ three. Hope this helps.