Yes but you aren’t truly free to choose which app you download. You have to use the one being used by the people you want to message. That is of strong benefit to incumbents.
Meta and Apple are paying for far more bandwidth than what AIM was moving around back then. Very high quality videos, audio, pictures, and gifs not to mention files and group video calls.
Their will. I'm perfectly fine receiving full quality media as files, I don't need meta to reformat my media to reduce their bandwidth bill and train their model, they could redirect me to the original file if I am using another messaging app.
> you aren’t truly free to choose which app you download. You have to use the one
Singular? You'd just use whichever app a given person is on (everyone here has 3+ chat apps installed). Wouldn't network effects only kick in when group chats are involved?
Yes, and failing that, you could simply revert to plain old SMS. IMO, a better course of action would have been forcing Whatsapp to provide an alternative way to access their group chats.
Or alternatively, forcing all phones and carriers to support RCS as a condition for certification, and funding the development of a quality FOSS RCS client.