Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just go back to email, which is what I've done. Proton Mail is an excellent alternative to Gmail, and pretty much everyone, even Richard Stallman, has an email address. Reaching out to individuals or sending out a general update every once in a while will suffice. Unless one's friends are really immature, people will hesitate to send you photos of their food or their thoughts on some trite opinion piece.
What's wrong with GMail? Google stopped mining it last year: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
You can be locked out of your account for arbitrary-reason-of-the-day and good luck finding a contact number or email address for support.
If email is important to you, you probably shouldn’t be using a “free” service.