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by threeseed 1398 days ago
The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.

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.
2 comments
throw0101a 1398 days ago
> The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.

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.

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Jleagle 1398 days ago
Except SMS isn't being replaced, the new protocols work along side SMS. That's like saying WhatsApp is replacing iMessage.

RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.

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joshstrange 1397 days ago
> RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.

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.

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