I actually had notifications of many non-technical friends getting onto signal. It gained significant traction I think?

https://simplex.chat/

The first messenger without user IDs

Other apps have user IDs: Signal, Matrix, Session, Briar, Jami, Cwtch, etc. SimpleX does not, not even random numbers. This radically improves your privacy. Why user IDs are bad for privacy? How does SimpleX work? Security assessment