It's a common misconception that hidden services are safer than clearnet. Hidden services provide anonymity for the server. They don't protect your anonymity any better. Tor gives you anonymity on both clearnet and hidden services. That being said, hidden services can prevent users from screwing up in some cases. For example, if you are connecting to an XMPP server over Tor and you accidentally disable the proxy settings, you will connect directly to a clearnet site and expose your IP address, while it will simply fail to reach a .onion address.