The least dystopian communication is email. Plenty secure, you are able to set-up your own server, you can communicate with everyone regardless of their OS or client. Rich text, photo support, video support. Open protocols.

A sort of email but then for short messages would be awesome.

That's got to be the most dystopian one of them all! It's government owned, so conspiracy theory is that the CCP can see everything you write and hear and see in the app. Whatsapp is end to end encrypted, so meta knows your metadata, so they can show you ads, but that's tiny dystopia compared to the government of the country you live in reading and listening to everything you do on your phone