Maybe I misunderstood your reasoning but it seems like you're suggesting that Whatsapp for instance is forced to let third party clients connect to their system? That still gives Facebook access to data I don't want them to have. The whole point is to cut these information brokers entirely out of the loop, not force them into a compromise where they get some of what they want anyway.

Not really - it's pretty easy to add encryption on top of a channel as long as both folks are using a client that would support it.

I think that’s the worst possible solution. At the moment I have control over whether or not I have any conversations via Facebook’s platform. The forced 3rd Party integration completely takes that away. Facebook will weasel even further into the lives of those who actively try to avoid them.

You mean Discord implementing XMPP?

Maybe, but the services might also be allowed to offer completely custom APIs. The proposal isn't quite clear on that. Also, at this stage it's just a draft that has a long way to go until it can come into effect and the chances that it gets altered into something completely different along the way are still pretty high. Don't get your hopes up yet.

And/Or Matrix

It should be a rule that you have to have implemented a protocol before you can start demanding that others do so.

No demanding here, just wishful thinking. I am aware that the Matrix protocol is way more complex than other chat protocols.

I was thinking about this and wondering how you can offer secure federated messaging.

Does one encryption scheme have to mandated as the standard scheme?

This would be a beautiful result, something that's 100% beneficial to a consumer

Would be great not to have six chat apps open all the time.

Yeah. I sometimes miss the days where I could chat with my Facebook friends using Empathy on Linux without having a browser open.