In my circle of friends, everyone used a non standard client so they could customize the skin of the client. Most of these people were either not technical or at least just technical enough to follow simple instructions. I personally knew many people that used the multi-protocol chat clients. Their primary interest was for the customization capabilities of the client and having all their messages in one place rather than encryption plugins. The vendor clients did not have a dark mode and were nowhere near as customizable. The E2EE aspect was just a nice to have for some.
I suspect this will never be a thing again as vendors might decide to ban accounts that use a client other than their own and people would fear losing their social circles in the vendor locked in services. That is, outside of IRC. One can still use E2EE in IRC.
In my circle of friends, everyone used a non standard client so they could customize the skin of the client. Most of these people were either not technical or at least just technical enough to follow simple instructions. I personally knew many people that used the multi-protocol chat clients. Their primary interest was for the customization capabilities of the client and having all their messages in one place rather than encryption plugins. The vendor clients did not have a dark mode and were nowhere near as customizable. The E2EE aspect was just a nice to have for some.
I suspect this will never be a thing again as vendors might decide to ban accounts that use a client other than their own and people would fear losing their social circles in the vendor locked in services. That is, outside of IRC. One can still use E2EE in IRC.