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For normal end user average usage signal is the best option available, specially for family since they may already be used to the flow and UX of it. Simple and straight forward. All the “bad” things you read are about nerds being annoying and not liking a very particular specific thing and thinking that specific thing should be the only focus.

So just make people use signal. It’s the best and simplest way with the most common features for individuals and small groups. A simple download, in a common known place on a store without confusing people with differences between a protocol and a client and with and onboarding experience most are already familiar and ok using.

Even so you still need to make sure that the app does not have battery optimizations turned on, but that applies to all apps used for communication that are not blessed in specific phones (like facebook and whatsapp already having that setting by default because vendors make it so).

Private against who?

Privacy communities need to really drill in the idea of threat models instead of pretending privacy is some linear scale and the ultimate goal is to bury your phone and computer in a lead-lined concrete block underground. Privacy and security are meaningless concepts unless you know who your are protecting it from and what their capabilities might be. I don’t need to hide from NSA Tailored Access Operations because I’m not trying to x the y of the USA. I do need to protect myself from basic scam attackers, copyright trolls and neo-nazi stalkers. And Matrix, along with certain basic opsec guidelines, does that and more for me.

Probably yes, it depends on your threat model.

If you are using E2EE on a matrix.org account then your message content, attachments (images) and most other traffic isn’t accessible to anyone but the people in the chat. However Matrix isn’t the most private option, it has a number of leaks such as reactions and chat topics (these are being worked on but aren’t close to happening).

For most people Matrix is a very private and secure option and the fact that it is federated is a huge plus. If you want something more secure you are probably looking at Signal (which you don’t want to use and isn’t federated) or Simplex Chat (which doesn’t have multi-device support).

Matrix/Element is pretty private, but not wide spreaded. For the use with friends and Family is more realisticto use Signal or any other decentralized Chat.

If it’s low privacy needs (ie you don’t have a state threat model), Signal is completely fine. I use it to talk to my friends. I also use Matrix, though federated Matrix isn’t the best for privacy either due to the amount of metadata that leaks through federation. But federated Matrix is also fine for the kinds of things you would use eg Discord or IRC for.

If you do have a state threat model, I personally think SimpleX is ideal for that, but it doesn’t have as much of a userbase so you probably need people who care enough (eg people actively under threat) to switch to a new platform. Whereas most people I know are already on either Signal or Matrix, and I’m not having particularly sensitive conversations with them either so both work fine.

Matrix.org is centralized like Signal (you can say Matrix is not centralized on paper, but in practice this isn’t remotely true). Both are stockpiling metadata in the West… what’s worse is Matrix’s eventual consistency model means syncing metadata to all servers is a by-design requirement (& also why all servers & clients are slow). There are options like Snikket to take all the hard parts of self-hosting out of the equation, but finding someone you can trust to host a server might be worthwhile. I would be wary of anything centralized.

Matrix and Simplex is fine but I would recommend Signal for family and friends. Threema is also option but not user friendly for friends and family who wants easy user discovery than sharing userIDs.