When WCD closed, it had over 1M releases. Now these respectively have 1.8 and 1.3. Requests are filled-up quickly thanks to Spotify downloaders. Most torrents are xseeded on both, so there is redundancy. I’d say it’s doing pretty well.

Note that Signal is not a company, it’s an NGO. Would you say that Wikipedia is at risk of disappearing because it’s centralized?

Nobody would host a worldwide instant messaging (including a lot of data such as video) on its own servers. That would be incredibly costly and inefficient. Designing for E2E (nothing critical happening on the server) is the way to go.

I guess just don’t by one of these “certified Android devices”. Might become a selling point. Other option would be to run SailfishOS (buy a Jolla phone) or install Ubuntu Touch / Mobian and use Anbox.