I guess that sucks because I make a living working in cyber security. What do I know, amirite? 🤷

No. XMPP would be the best choice.

Wait till everyone, including audiophools, find out how their super hi-res old recordings are made. :)

Or self-host XMPP server on low-end VPS, it'd cost you few euros a month and you can provide E2EE service to your friends and family. It'll cost less than Threema and you will be in control of your data.

Check out "monocles chat" as replacement for Cheogram. They look very similar but monocles comes with some functionality and UI tweaks.