I hope Apple never adopts RCS(blog.mogery.me) |
I hope Apple never adopts RCS(blog.mogery.me) |
Almost everywhere else in the world, users have simply adopted a variety of 3rd-party messaging apps that use the phone's Internet rather than GSM connection, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal, WeChat, etc.
EDIT: While I understand the need for a 'universal E2EE messaging standard', we don't have one right now, and all three (SMS, RCS, iMessage) are poor stop-gaps. People need to send their texts, images, videos, and files to people without pain; that's all the average layperson cares about. What does fill this need are said 3rd-party apps, which claim to have E2EE messaging. Whether this is really true remains to be seen.
I'm in the UK and my work uses Slack and also wants me to use WhatsApp for OOH contact. My friends are mostly on Discord. My family is mostly only available via iMessage. A few of the more privacy conscious use Telegram or Signal. A few of the more OSS conscious use Matrix. Some chat is still on IRC (actually I like that...).
Users relying on third party apps over the top has strong network effects for keeping people using services from Facebook et al, and I'm not too fond of that.
I'm vaguely optimistic about the EU's idea of forcing these apps to be able to federate in at least a basic sense, but we'll see.
I predict it'll 'work' so that the companies aren't fined by the EU, but the service will be atrocious.
You'll probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it work, and even then you'll probably have to wait 5 minutes for messages to be delivered, have to deal with bugs galore, and have most of the features not work.
"Warning: Sending an animated emoji will eject all non-iMessage users out of this group conversation".
Here in Germany, almost everyone I know is on Signal. That is not privacy conscious people or even tech-affine ones, almost everyone uses it in addition to WhatsApp. WA is mainly used when it works better (in bad connection situations, something that is embarrassingly relevant in Germany, Signal messages sometimes don’t work without an indication of it happening, WA messages just work) or a special feature is needed (live location sharing).
Agreed, although where I live, most people have consolidated on Telegram. WhatsApp was popular about 5 years ago, but its popularity has quickly waned because of how difficult inter-device use is.
You can also use iMessage with an Apple ID, including to contact those who only have a phone number (and the reverse also works). This works on non-cellular devices as well such as iPod/iPad/Mac.
The real hesitation by Apple is obvious, RCS is half baked: it's not a true E2EE solution and in some scenarios encryption is simply not available at all. It is demonstrably worse than other chat technologies, doesn't solve the problems it sets out to fix and the only benefit to its existence is that it gives Google a way to control a competitor's platform.
Apple have already made the right kinds of concessions for chat apps on their platforms. All apps are able to hook into the native video/voice call, Contacts and instant-notification reply interfaces. Not only does this make each 3rd party app have the same feeling and level footing as Messages. It has the run on benefit of extending support for these services into devices where there isn't even an app available. E.g. one can reply to chat messages from their car or apple watch, even if there is no app on those platforms - this really goes a long way to helping 3rd parties establish themselves without having to build an app for every single one of Apple's hardware endeavours. Google could go this route with an RCS app, but it's clear that there is no end-user benefit here, especially when Whatsapp and others did the hard work in carving out the critical mass needed to exist as a standalone chat app.
From a privacy perspective, I hate this - Apple did this only to access more of our data. E.g. if anyone voice or video calls me on one of these apps, Apple has access to that metadata because it will now be listed in the recent call list that is under Apple's control. If I am using (for e.g.) WhatsApp or Signal, it's partly because I want to avoid iMessage and ensure Apple doesn't have access to more of my personal data.
The proportion of people with phone-only plans is very small and getting smaller by the year.
Let's just have an interoperability standard that is data based, encrypted and independent of carriers.
Nowhere near true. As soon as you cross a geo boundary (ie travel) SMS is Russian roulette. It often doesn't go through at all. In the US, I've also seen carriers remove non-ascii characters.
I agree, and this is unfortunate. However, they're not going away at all, and the free alternatives (IRC?) are relegated to niche developer groups. For work communications, we have Slack, Discord, Teams, Zoom; for normal messaging, the apps I mentioned above (and more; Instagram/TikTok/etc have their own DM platforms).
It will take real concerted effort to fix this, and somehow I don't see it happening.
My own personal view (Denmark based, age: mid thirties): In my group of extended friends and family almost everyone uses SMS/iMessage. SMS has been (basically) free to use here for many many years (or so many included in your basic plan you would never reach the limit). I believe this has slowed the adoption of the various chat apps here significantly - at least for people my age. Most of my friends share the same habit of calling each other if you want to know something that is time sensitive. If you don't need an answer right away you can text.
New acquaintances are first added on Facebook/Messenger since you can find people by their name and then if you actually communicate with them on a regular basis you eventually get their phone number to make it easier if you for example need to call them. Almost nobody I know use Messenger's voice calls. My family (and some friends) has resorted to sending SnapChat images instead. Sharing something without it ending up in a "permanent" chat history seems to be getting more common as it is somewhat informal. I never watch people's "stories/reels" in whatever format they might take as they are not sent directly to me and they seem to expire after a short while. I hate that pressure to constantly check in not to miss anything so now I ignore it completely and I'm happier for it. If anything I have a lot more to talk about with people when I finally meet them than if I already knew everything they had been doing.
I have a few WhatsApp groups going with my international friends and various local volunteer-based organizations.
The only people I use SMS to talk to are my parents, who are too non-technical to install any apps that didn't come with their phones.
edit: people seems to miss that I said that this is only part of the reason not the reason. I also said many places outside the US (not all). So do people down vote because they think that there are only US and EU in the world? I am missing that point.
Even the cheapest of plans from the main networks (3, vodafone, EE, o2) - as low as £4/mo have unlimited calls & SMS now.
edit: this has been the case for quite a few years now, too.
Surely RCS raises the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, and people are still free to use whatever 3rd party data-based messaging service they want to, be it iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or whatever else, even ICQ if that still exists.
I don't think I've ever intentionally/deliberately chosen to use RCS, but (on my (Android) phone at least) it does seem to transparently turn itself on the very rare occasion when I send SMS messages (usually in reply to a received SMS), if supported by both phones.
I'm not aware of anyone making that argument, it would replace and/or compliment SMS (since even if Apple adopts RCS, SMS is going to around for a long time).
> Surely RCS raises the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, and people are still free to use whatever 3rd party data-based messaging service they want to, be it iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or whatever else, even ICQ if that still exists.
Is it better than SMS? Yes but that's a low bar to clear and as a chat protocol it has many failings, not least of which are it's weak E2E when it supports it at all. Also RCS is practically owned by Google, operated by carriers, I literally cannot think of a worse combo of 2 companies/industries that I do not trust.
Bottom line is SMS is going to be around for the foreseeable future (so much is built on it, similar to email for better or worse) and we will have to support a SMS fallback even with RCS support in iOS. Because of that and the lack of compelling reasons to move to RCS, I feel like it's best just to leave SMS as-is and work on pushing people to your preferred third-party chat app.
So why throw it a lifeline with RCS when there can be a better standard.
I’m under the impression you need Apple hardware to use iMessage, and that even third-party solutions rely upon proxying via real Apple hardware which has to be turned on (I get the impression some basically offer the hardware as a paid service, and others require you to own the hardware?). This tips the balance completely the other direction, as a lot more people have phone numbers than can use iMessage without further expenditure.
[0] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Post-Install/universal/i...
If you’re already in the Apple ecosystem, fine, and that is kinda the target of the article; but it’s worded in a way that I don’t like and find extremely misleading, since it’s also about interactions with others, who have a fair chance of not possessing the required hardware.
What is the main argument(s?) against implementing RCS? That it doesn't have E2EE? Neither does SMS, so RCS is no worse in that regard, but seems to have some extra nice things.
In the beginning of this year we had another look at the situation, and somewhat surprisingly there has been very little progress in terms of operator support. As we would say in Sweden: it appears to be moving slower than a snail on vacation.
(Google acquired jibe, a major company developing RCS clients/servers, and started rolling their own RCS-server and moving almost all vendors to the same client)
My expectation would be that by 2022 the majority of Europe carriers support RCS, not as an in-house service but by using either Google's cloud-based RCS or Samsung's RCS and their respective device-clients (with Samsung on steady decline).
The situation is a bit opaque, but if you look deeper on the device-side, RCS is no longer a carrier-controlled service. Google and Samsung combined control >90% of the client/server development and operations. They surely both align via the GSMA, but I doubt that the GSMA has actual control over the roadmap of RCS any more today than it had control over it ~2 years ago (which was close to zero)
This is a chicken and egg argument.
> Security > Prerequisites
Both of these arguments rest on the assumption that RCS replaces iMessage. That's not the point. The data is already unencrypted. You already need a paid phone number. The benefit is that two large groups of users' devices that interact poorly today interact better with RCS. Google isn't asking Whatsapp or Signal to implement RCS, it doesn't make sense that they'd expect Apple to shut down their proprietary service to use a less-featurefull option instead.
iMessage is device centered - your messages are just relayed to desktop by the mobile messaging app. Android messages can do this too [1], So can Samsung [2]
Until 2015 the direction of RCS was for every carrier to setup infrastructure to operate a own RCS server. A few companies offered such RCS infra, but a key player in the center of the whole standardization and interoperability matter was a company called jibe. Jibe was selling RCS servers (and clients) to network operators, and got a few of the key-carriers as customers from the start.
As each device-manufacturer was expected to develop/source his own client, and network carriers needed servers to interoperate as well, alot of interoperability discussions, testing and refinement was needed. As a key server-vendor, jibe was at the heart of all those topics and a strong participant in GSMA RCS.
In 2015 Google made a move to enter the RCS space and acquired jibe. It started the trajectory which transformed RCS into the mostly Google-operated service that it is today. Google integrated RCS-client capabilities into their Android Messages application and offer RCS as a unified cloud-based service to operators.
Within just a few years:
- All network operators who planned to invest into RCS infrastructure scrapped those plans, entered an agreement with Google to use their cloud-based RCS-service instead and mandated towards device-vendors to adopt Android Messages.
- Network operators who had no concrete plans for RCS made the same agreement with Google as it promised revenue-share but required zero investment from them.
What remains is a handful of network carriers who #1: already have RCS-infra and #2: Didn't shut it down yet.
I'd say that 99% of all Android Smartphones today either use a Google Messages client or a Samsung Message client, with the majority of them connecting either to a Google RCS-server or a Samsung RCS-server.
The companies surely still align via GSMA, and the carriers / network operators are still involved in discussions about the specification, but given the direction of the past 5 years I don't see that they have actual control over the roadmap of RCS.
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All that said, RCS is the best candidate we have to replace SMS, with a majority of carriers chipping in, so it would be reasonable for Apple to adopt RCS as a replacement for SMS and align with the industry on how this standard should be shaped.
I reckon RCS tried to circumvent that to a point (but still saying 'screw you' to desktop users) but alas it seems this horrible too-many-IM-apps won't be ever solved.
It is still an issue for desktop but that’s a minority of IM users these days.
Nope. As RCS is better than SMS, adopting it would be a step forward. The whole article can be summed up to "RCS is not perfect, so it should not be used". Which is of course silly as RCS is better than the current option it replaces, SMS.
At least SMS is a standard where as Google has their own proprietary version.
AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's RCS client implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client.
I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.
If a centralized messaging app became dominant in America, it would likely attract antitrust attention too. These apps have to make money somehow, usually by selling emoticons, charging business users, or adding features like payments. I doubt the current FTC would be pleased if Meta realized their old ambition of creating America's WeChat.
RCS may not be perfect but I would rather see Apple adopt it if the alternative is nothing. The messaging experience for America would be a lot better for it. Google's rhetoric around this seems to indicate there's no current interest in collaborating to build a better standard, so it seems to be a far off ambition.
Of course Google's app isn't straight RCS, but it _is_ what everybody actually uses, because RCS failed to gain cross-platform, carrier, and manufacturer acceptance. So Google basically followed Apple's lead and created their own centralized messaging.
So this isn't about "Apple should support the open-standard known as RCS", it's "Apple should natively integrate Google's messaging app".
And worst of all Google implemented encryption by layering it on top i.e. creating their own proprietary version.
The backdoor is that you cannot exclude iMessage from your enabled by default iCloud backup.
Google is not in it for the long haul. Companies whose entire modus operandi is providing value to paying customers (e.g. Apple) will do well to steer clear.
Except that you can already get spam "in iMessage" because the iMessage app is also the (default) SMS app on iPhones, and so anyone can send an SMS to your phone number and you'll receive it.
> RCS would bring the spam protection to sms levels, i.e. absolutely non-existant
You already have no protection against SMS on your iMessage app, so not having protection against RCS spam is no worse than the current situation in that regard, but at least RCS has extra things like group chat which would be nice for cross-platform interoperability.
The app is Messages, the protocol is iMessage. Don't confuse the two, it's an important distinction. There is practically zero iMessage spam.
RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard.
There is no point moving to RCS which just prolongs this death and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.
Each of which is a wall gardened onto itself. So instead of having one app where I can chat, I have App A to talk with Group-of-Friends 1, App B to talk with Group-of-Family/Friends 2, App C…
Thanks, but I'll happily give up E2EE to not have to deal with the above hassle.
At that point I might as well give up on SMS/RCS and go back to only sending e-mails which is an open, federated standard.
> […] and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.
AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client. I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.
RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.
MMS has been a dumpster fire since the beginning. They haven't improved it in all these years, but still price it as if they hand deliver the messages on a golden plate (my operator's cheapest MMS price is 20x more expensive than the same bandwidth on their data plan, and the regular price is closer to 300x markup).
These are the operators that put uninstallable crapware on phones they're able to touch (Apple has won a hard battle here; phones used to be sold on operators' terms before the iPhone). These are the operators that are unwilling to secure caller ID. These are the operators that sell their user's traffic. These are the operators charge fuck-you prices for roaming. I don't want them to be in control of anything.
RCS will be just an extra item to upsell, and the technology — which is already worse than every competitor — will be left to languish forever.
I see that as a huge positive - I'd rather that my personal communication never be under the control and mercy of foreign BigTechs, and would prefer that it be under the telecom companies who are obliged to follow certain laws and regulations on pricing and QoS. I don't see it as having anything to do with net neutrality.
But also there is a real experience difference between iMessages and SMS and especially mixed group chats. Social people -even adults- who have lots of group chats via default messaging inadvertently punish android users for using SMS and that worse experience is represented in green. It’s just a symbol for that worse experience.
In fact, it’s getting worse not better. I have every messaging app imaginable on my iPhone (because it’s just an app why not). If I group chat mixed iPhone and android - I get the expected bad experience. But a lot of android users have now set up Signal to be their SMS app. So my iPhone will mix SMS iMessage going out, only for an android user to mix SMS signal messages coming back. So now the conversation is smeared across three apps and ruined.
Hence why I just install every app. So i can increase the odds of finding an alternative common ground.
PS. Everyone blames the android guy not the iPhone guy. “Stop being poor” or whatever. People are cruel.
Everyone else simply uses WhatsApp if everyone does not have iMessage.
I don't know if this is merely immaturity, or sheer vapidness.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... (paywalled)
I don't know child psychology, but if I were to guess it's a manifestation of "survival of the fittest".
It is explicitly designed to give carriers back control of messaging.
Why am I even saying this? We all remember how much fun carriers control over SMS was. It killed sms. There were never any new features. Cost made lots of stuff, such as multi party chats effectively impossible for teenagers ... It was always very unclear how much everything cost. There were "traps" with premium services, often not advertised as such. Now there's fraud with international SMSes. And things have gotten worse' several states made clear they use phones to find abortions ... And RCS is designed to bring this back. No.
Just. NO.
My 3.99€/month plan includes 100 SMS. Not that I ever use all of those, all of my 100 minutes, or all of my 1 GB of data.
Only if you don't count building/support/maintenance of RCS. SMS works well enough for it's main jobs: fallback for people that won't install a 3rd party app, an insecure channel for TOTP (something RCS doesn't improve on), and the one near-guaranteed messaging channel for a whole range of services that can't or won't write an app with push notifications.
Adding RCS is not free/easy and it continues to make us dependent on the carriers and Google, two groups I trust about as far as I can throw them. RCS is a crap "standard", this isn't a case of good being the enemy of great, it's a case of Google trying to force their latest messaging platform on everyone.
That changed, but e.g. with my pre-paid plan I still pay 12 cents per SMS.
Historically there was also a problem that unlimited SMS plans worked only within a country. Now it's a bit better being EU-wide, but still not worry free.
No spam because you needed SMS text verification, no ads, no login to remember, just all around amazing app at the right place at the right time.
The only thing I'll add is that, ca 2012 which is when whatsapp started really taking off where I live, intercarrier SMS was slow and unreliable. WhatsApp was fast and reliable.
Traditionally the EU is not amused by companies trying to cleverly work around its competition laws. I fully expect long trials with significant fines following the introduction of this law and hopefully things should settle for the better in a couple of years.
As Facebook and their suits illustrate, you can’t always run an international and feature-full service with their laws. The requirements for federation will probably devolve to an email or SMS fallback or just a lack of service offered. Big companies that don’t want to retreat at the risk of market share will totally provide lip service to the rules and implement the exact letter of the law and nothing more.
I expect that the EU taking this and other action will be a lot like the GDPR: solving a problem and providing a few solutions but basically none of the vision. The GDPR mandates data-exporting out of a service with the idea of portability. Except no one offers imports so there’s no real portability gained, just auditability (which is nice).
I do agree that I expect long trials and significant fines. The EU will look good politically for taking a stand to those big American companies. Those big American companies will maybe write a big check but certainly appeal for a decade.
So the question is if Google was willing to deviate from the standard for encryption what else will they do in the future.
No. If I telnet to tcp/25, do a "EHLO foo", and in addition to:
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 27962030
250-DSN
250-ETRN
250-DELIVERBY
250 HELP
250-X-GOOGLE-CRYPTO
250-X-APPLE-CRYPTO
If I can send SMS messages between iPhones and Androids, then I'm content. If I could send (non-extended) RCS messages between iPhones and Androids, then I'd be content. If either company wants to add 'extra' features between their own clients, go right ahead.
And, using the above analogy, it would be best if there was a "250-STARTTLS" RCS-equivalent that anyone could implement.
What’s missing: The reply mechanism doesn’t work as well as it does for specific apps that are better with this. It does basic reply quoting but that’s all.
Notifications could be better. There’s no customization per type of app. They do all keyword notifications which almost no app does. However since notifications are all or nothing it is just okay.
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Overall, the app is super solid and works well. I agree I don’t think it’s perfect and has plenty of bugs or lacks specific nuanced features.
I don’t think we will ever get a common uniting protocol. We never had it. Even when jabber was the common protocol, FBM didn’t support group chats with it.
I am assuming Matrix is the best we will get. Or some other sleeker app building off Matrix will come out. We do have MatterMost too but it seems Matrix “won”
I haven't touched any 3rd party messaging app, and I'd like to have my family start using one. But I'd like one that works on desktop as well... windows and linux. Does Signal, Telegram, or the others let you do that without jumping through hoops?
First you need to distinguish between what your phone knows and what Apple knows. Most of what you've described are things that only your phone knows. Through a judicial process of attaining access to your iCloud backup (should you opt into such a service) could law enforcement then have access to that data. This is a significantly different approach to Android, where Google actively collect and use that data in profile building - this is perhaps where the confusion might be coming from.
Secondly there is some naivety about using an Apple phone and believing that you're not sharing functonality-essential data with the manufacturer and author of the operating system. Your device basically will not function without Apple's service backend. There isn't any moral question here because you would be aware that by buying an Apple device and using Apple-fed services that you are in some way engaging in some kind of relationship with Apple. If you believe that these devices can function without such backends, you are grandly mistaken. Moral questions come about when you engage in a relationship with one tech company, only for that company to start on-selling your data through a variety of products based on your use of the device. I.E. What happens with Android.
Also I'm not going to even touch the absolute hilarity of using WhatsApp while having concerns about privacy/metadata collection.
Not when your call list is automatically synced to the cloud (default settings), and all the BigTech reset your settings to default whenever you update to get more of your personal data.
> Secondly there is some naivety about using an Apple phone and believing that you're not sharing functonality-essential data with the manufacturer and author of the operating system.
That's exactly what I am complaining about - people like you think that is ok and normal, many of us don't and so we vocally complain out loud. My phone runs Sailfish OS, and I don't have to worry about these kind of bullshit with it.
> you would be aware that by buying an Apple device and using Apple-fed services that you are in some way engaging in some kind of relationship with Apple.
Making a voice or video call through a third-party app has nothing to do with Apple. Buying an Apple device doesn't imply that we have to accept servitude or an abusive one sided relationship with Apple, as most of you are proposing that we accept blindly.
> Moral questions come about when you engage in a relationship with one tech company, only for that company to start on-selling your data through a variety of products based on your use of the device.
And you are naive to believe Apple has not started doing that. As more and more regulation appear around the world that force Apple to open up their device, you will find Apple becoming more and more abusive with their user's data.
Your phone literally can't make a phone call without having initially shared data with Apple and your telco. This isn't some privacy-invading norm, it's the literal spec for cellular devices.
That's why when you go to Apple, give them your details and activate your phone - you are knowingly engaging in a relationship with them. This isn't some point of controversy - it is literally you making a choice about which phone you wanted to buy. You choosing to ignore Apple's and your telco's privacy policy which outline the types of data needed to operate the device really isn't something you can blame them for.
The point I'm making, which I think is lost here is that people like yourself are painfully unaware how dependent your device is on the manufacturer to function. It's a point of tedium because your type will rant on about privacy without having any understanding about what is privacy, what is essential data for the operation of the device - and then jump to literally absurd conclusions with the little information you have garnered.
Secondly you acknowledge that there are ways to limit the functionality of your device by providing less data to the manufacturer. So clearly something is working upstairs, but the compromise in that is you have limited functionality - in which case I question why you purchased that device to begin with.
Finally you are naively unaware about the differences in how your personal data is handled between Apple and Google. They are not in any way equivalent, and you've made many incorrect assumptions that Apple are doing things that Google do with Android, despite their public statements, privacy policy and 3rd party investigation that confirms otherwise.
In short you sound like a tinfoil idiot. You're not interested in facts, you're interested in mudslinging, and it's patently clear that you're happy to lie in order to do that.
Yeah, I know, you use third-party apps for that. That's not the point.
SMS is botched and finding an overlapping app across 15 people is impossible. How are you supposed to coordinate that if you can’t even use SMS groups? How do you find a common app? You’d need one or two people doing person to person investigation to figure it out. At that point, it’s easier just to find the one person who’s phone doesn’t work and relay messages to them. Half the people don’t want to download a new app. Another half don’t trust Facebook apps. Another half think email is too slow (and too easy to exclude someone).
The general social sentiment is that the android users did this to themselves by choosing a cheap phone or choosing to care more about “not letting apple be in control”.
It's temporary technical issue if Apple were to support RCS; otherwise, it is a long term issue. It is due SMS limits. This is why Google is trying to pressure Apple into supporting RCS. Apple certainly won't loosen control of iMessage.
> I presume adults would just call each other
We are talking about a large group chat. Easily 15+ people. Calling is not really an option for replying there.
> switch to Whatsapp
Not going to happen. We are talking about people who only recently became comfortable with messaging. Trying to throw them into a new application would take too long and cause too much frustration. The better answer is for Apple to support RCS.
So then why not use another proprietary client like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc.
And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends?
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
RCS may not be perfect, but it seems to have nice things over and above SMS. I have no objections to adding more nice things to RCS (or whatever comes after it), but why shouldn't we implement the nice things of RCS?
There are how many different cross-platform messaging apps?
But that still doesn't mean RCS is good.
Ideally messaging shouldn't be controlled by either BigTech or BigTelecom, but RCS being a Google-telecom cooperation fails on both counts at the same time.
That's a disingenuous argument as voice and data (sms, video calls, mms etc.) on any telecom network has never been considered a part of the internet. Even though RCS uses parts of internet technologies (only because 4g / 5g are IP based and have replaced switch based technology), it's still a stretch to call it part of the "internet" as it is part of the telecom infrastructure and can connect to other telecom networks without necessarily needing the "internet" to do so.
And this legally mandated "inter-connectivity" remains the key point and advantage of telecom networks. The internet is also supposed to be like that, and many early internet technology were built with this feature of distributed inter-connectivity too. But WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, Skype etc. are all disconnected islands that are actually an aberration of this core value of the internet, and devalues the internet as a whole.
Phone numbers are an outdated idea, and shouldn't exist any more (and Signal is terrible for using them). You should have more privacy and have more control over your identity than what the legacy telecom setup allows. For example in most countries in Europe you can't get a phone number without a government ID tying it to your legal identity, and telecoms may be obliged to log your call metadata. Would you prefer e-mail as an open IP protocol, or a setup of traditional licensed postal operators that require government's permission to make an e-mail account for you?
* You can get spam in the app because it displays SMS.
* If it implemented RCS you could also get spam in the app too.
* But RCS also gives you extra capabilities.
How is this a worse situation?
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
RCS may not be perfect, but it seems to have nice things over and above SMS. I have no objections to adding more nice things to RCS (or whatever comes after it), but why shouldn't we implement the nice things of RCS in the meantime?
Huh? What is difficult there?
Until recently (like days ago) you still needed the main device to be online and connected to their server to use the both the web or desktop apps, although for some time there was a beta going for the feature they released a few days ago where that is "no longer required".
Even so, i was on the beta of the new feature where you could use the web or desktop app without the phone since it started and it has its quirks.. Often it fail to load either the history or even new messages, messages sent on the main device often do not show in the web\desktop app and performance is overall terrible.
Also there is still no official way to have the same whatsapp across multiple phone\tablets devices.
> Also there is still no official way to have the same whatsapp across multiple phone\tablets devices.
That seems dumb. Luckily not an issue for me.
True. But it is also a fact that telecom networks inside a country offer better privacy and better protect democratic rights (in a democratic country) than some foreign powered network like the internet - if Google or Facebook misuse my data, I have less recourse to complain about them with the law than against a telecom company who have to follow stricter laws and regulations.
> You should have more privacy and have more control over your identity than what the legacy telecom setup allows.
This is again a disingenuous argument when it is a fact that telecom companies in democratic countries better protect your privacy because they are legally mandated to. In a democratic setup, the government requiring identity documents or logging 6 months of CDR are completely acceptable (and necessary) compromises as your rights are safeguarded in a democracy. Foreign BigTechs have no such obligations to us and even misuse the trust some people place in them to be truly abusive in violating a users data by invasively collecting vast amounts of data that they feel they are free to exploit in any manner. (E.g. WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy Shares Sensitive Data With Facebook, Forces Users Into Agreement By Providing Mirage Of Choice: Delhi HC - https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/delhi-high-court-whatsap... ).
Offering "free" services to hijack communication in a country is both anti-democratic and anti-competitive that needs to be curbed strongly by all democratic nations.
The problem is that whastapp is old and it was first designed those decisions made sense..
the only other option around was SMS but it was expensive in many countries.. So now you had the option to pay a few dollars to buy the whatsapp (yeah, had to pay for it back then) and you could send SMS-like messages for free..
That is why it is so widespread in many countries, because it was a cheap alternative to SMS..
It was designed as a replacement for SMS and many of the early technical decisions that are limiting then today were made with that in mind..
One phone number = one phone = one whatsapp account
that is no longer the case today but they have to deal with the technical debts of those early decisions..
AFAIK all the other alternatives available today came much later with a completely different mind set, so they do not have those same limitations..
RCS requires carriers to implement it. We don't need RCS, we need something better. I'm not opposed to stopgaps, but the complexity involved with RCS makes it much more than just a stopgap. Which is why it needs to die.
I'd rather hold out for something that's more than a tiny incremental improvement over SMS.
I'd rather move the ball forward with RCS and try to get something better, rather than just trying get something better—with no guarantee that it actually will happen, in which case we lost even the "incremental" opportunity of RCS.
I've seen the way these things go too often for that, though. Once there's something "good enough" in place the carriers and others who have the power to change things will just ignore all the calls for anything better. After all, we just got them to change to RCS! If that wasn't good enough, why were we pushing for it??! No, we have to take another 15, 20, 25 years to amortize the costs of switching to that.