Ultimately history has proven your decision to be wise, but there was still a meaningful selling point: Signal was (ostensibly) open source and its developers hadn't yet demonstrated any ill-will or incompetence.

Matrix really was not an option in the early days of signal (and arguably still isn't, for most non-technical users). I adopted Signal even though I disliked its centralization, resigned to the fact that it was a poor compromise but the best available.

In hindsight, though, Signal coaxed many users into its walled garden by being "good enough," which leads to complacency. That has only distracted us from the true importance of embracing and improving the nascent decentralized alternatives.