Ultimately you will have to make some concessions in regards to privacy. Most people aren’t going to install Signal just to talk to you because it does not fit their use case.

I’m also gen z and from the US, I go to university, and most people who I know use Whatsapp or Discord to communicate. While Whatsapp is not perfect, their messages are end-to-end encrypted, which is much better than most other mainstream platforms (I would honestly say that it is better than Telegram). Discord can at least be accessed through a browser with an email alias.

My preference for communication would be:

Best realistic case: Whatsapp or iMessage (if you have an Apple device)

Reluctantly use: Discord, Instagram, Telegram, SMS, any messenger that can be accessed through the browser without installing an app

Google Messages (and I think Samsung Messages) is the only app that supports RCS.

People will search for something, won’t see it below a bunch of ads, then go back and make a more specific search so they can be served more ads.

I have a Pixel phone, but I don’t use a custom ROM on it. I still depend on some Google services and apps for school and work.

I use NextDNS to block ads system-wide so I would probably stick with Vanadium instead of Cromite just to save memory. However, I would still use either Mull or Fennec F-droid as my main browser on mobile.

1. Cromite is an improvement to Bromite, so yes.

2. There are some things here or there that could be added, but it seems like a good browser for now.

3. The current developer has worked on Bromite in the past, so if you trusted Bromite I don’t see a reason not to trust Cromite.

4. It’s not listed because it was just released and I believe it was mentioned on Privacy Guides forums that the team is looking into it and may consider adding it to the recommended tools at some point.

5. Yes, I currently use Cromite as a back-up browser and Mull as my main browser.

Vanadium is built specifically for security. It lacks privacy features such as an ad blocker. It is also only available on GrapheneOS. Cromite seems much easier to recommend from a privacy stand point as the use case for Vanadium is very specific.

Skiff is another option to replace Gmail, it has 10 Gb free storage.

For Android check out this website: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/android/#operating-systems

I wish Bitwarden auto fill worked better with this browser.

It is a setting in the about:config menu on FireFox Beta and Nightly. When enabled, the browser tries to hide certain information about your browser and device from websites.

What makes you say DDG does not care about privacy?

Bitwarden password manager is secure, easy to use and syncs across devices on its own.

Most F-Droid apps you can probably download from the developer’s GitHub. Use the app Obtainium to download and update them fast.

I think it is the default settings, but you can change it to biometrics

Lemmy isn’t a private messenger and it’s safe to assume that anything you post on a site like Lemmy or Reddit could be seen or saved by anyone. On reddit you can edit older posts into gibberish and then delete them, on Lemmy you cannot fully delete posts from all instances so you have to be very careful. Making a new account every once in a while may help depending on your threat model