Signal, Telegram, why use SMS or RCS?
my *little* brother and his fiancee refuse to use anything but Facebook messenger or sms/MMS
they’re both android users
I’ve tried to explain it.
What bugs me the most about this sort of thing is that around 15 years ago, it wouldn’t have been nearly as much of a problem.
There was a short window when everyone was spread out over AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo’s Messenger, and Facebook all on PC before smartphones took off where you could use a third party program on your PC to log in to each of your messaging accounts and talk with everyone in one place. I remember using Trillian and Pidgin.
Then as smart phones took off, all the companies quadrupled down on the walled garden idea, most chat systems died off in favor of Facebook and text, and now that we have a new diaspora of chat systems we’re worse off than the late aughts. Technology was supposed to make shit easier and more interoperable, not worse and more walled off you corpo fucks!
Then as smart phones took off, all the companies quadrupled down on the walled garden idea
Yahoo and MSN had interop before smartphones existed. AIM and Google Talk (Jabber) as well.
When smart phones took off, Facebook Messenger actually had Jabber support (which also gave it interop with AIM and Google Talk).
The consolidation and walled gardens unfortunately came back later.
A little off topic
We used pidgin for short while at work. I got a ticket that this lady was getting out of disk errors. It was a new laptop so I was confused. I couldn’t find the culprit right away and ran windirstat on it. Pigin had created a 200+GB log file in her profile. I couldn’t believe it. We stopped using it shortly after that.
The majority of the people I text are non-nerds. To them, it just sounds like “I’m special, so if you want to text me, I need you to download this app you’ve never heard of instead of the feature your phone comes, that you use for everyone else, and that works with Siri.”
In Europe, SMS has been dead for at least a decade. It was so strange for me to find out other parts of the world still use it to text each other
No one should have to.
It’s ridiculous how far we’ve allowed this vendor lock in shit to get. Apple and Google should both be hit over the head repeatedly until they open the messaging up.
SMS had many issues but the ease with which one person could reach another was a genuine benefit for communication. And we’ve let these companies take us away from that. It’s absolute bullshit.
There is zero chance I’m going to be able to convince my grandparents to switch to signal for the handful of times we text each other a year.
My mom didn’t even start using SMS until like 2010.
My 82yr old mother uses Signal on her iPad and iPhone to message me.
It is ironic that google touts RCS as a “open platform”, when you have to use google’s implementation of it.
It is not only ironic but pathetic. They promote it as the new open standard and people who just don’t look further into the details believe it.
I think the fact that no other app can do RCS messages on Android also undermines Google’s case when they are pushing for Apple to adopt RCS, and I think Apple should absolutely roast them over this.
Signed a rooted Android user.
Isn’t Google Messages tied to an account?
Couldn’t they just block the accounts that are spamming?
Why the hell does this have to be about the phone’s “integrity”?
It’s genuinely disgusting how Google talks about unlocked bootloaders and rooting. They talk about it like Apple talks about side loading apps: some offensive, gross aberration of their beautiful ecosystem, when what they’re talking about is their own customers using their own device how they like.
Messages is the default texting app. It doesn’t require any sort of login.
It’s not always the default though
Play Integrity Fix magisk module fixes it. For now, anyway. I had PIF 15.1 previously and my RCS stopped working a few weeks ago. I just updated to 15.9.2 and now it’s working again. I imagine it’ll be a cat and mouse game like everything else having to do with rooted phones.
I’m not sure it was PIF. I updated PIF on my phone, but not my husband’s and RCS started working a few hours later on both
yet google keeps touting it as an “open” standard
So Google is shit, Apple is shit… What’s the option here? Is there any way to realistically avoid either of them?
Why must we deal with this duopoly over the most important device in our lives?
signal
RCS wasn’t working for a few hours on my and my husband’s phones the other day, but resolved a few hours later. No problems since or before
Rooted ?
A long time ago, Google stopped doing updates on rooted phones. It’s why I stopped rooting my phone. Doing Android updates by reinstalling the latest release every couple months was a PITA. Also, Google finally got the Restore from last Backup working to the point that I didn’t have to rely on a backup utility that required rooting my phone. Ah, the early days of Android.
Not being able to rely on RCS from rooted phones makes sense security-wise. You can’t trust what’s attached to that message. It could be a code injection hack.
Not being able to rely on RCS from rooted phones makes sense security-wise. You can’t trust what’s attached to that message. It could be a code injection hack.
It makes no sense at all security-wise. It is always a bad idea to rely on the security of a client that you don’t own or control.
Your statement makes the assumptions that Google can detect every rooted device and there’s no possible other way to send RCS messages. Neither are true.
