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by wkat4242 457 days ago
It also requires a Google account as far as I know. I have Google apps but no account signed in. And when I tap on the connect RCS option it asks me to sign in.

Anyway iMessage (and iOS for that matter) is irrelevant where I live so I don't expect this to change anything. I'm not going to be on RCS. The main apps here are WhatsApp and Telegram (the latter more for groups)
2 comments
o11c 457 days ago
I have a very minimal Android phone with no Google account ever added/used on the device, and it says my chats with other Android users are using RCS ...

The phone number is associated in the other direction though (way back when Google didn't be evil and GMail required invites, I dared to trust them with it, I forget for what).

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lxgr 457 days ago
It shouldn't. The only reason Google Messages sometimes asks for an account is to support remote access via messages.google.com without scanning a QR code, as far as I know.

While it's largely openness/federation theater (Google runs most servers in the background, either on behalf of or instead of the mobile networks), they at least got that part right (as in conforming to the specification, not as in doing the long-term right thing for users) and exclusively use the phone number as an identifier.

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wkat4242 457 days ago
Ah ok strange. It is a Samsung phone though. Samsung has been forcing a Google login in more and more places unfortunately. I think they made some deal with them about the AI features. Just like they now promote OneDrive instead of their own cloud. Maybe that's why or I didn't understand the popup.

I don't really want it if I can't access my messages online anyway. The whole reason I love telegram and WhatsApp is that I don't need my phone when I'm on the computer (which is 90% of the time). But a Google account is out of the question.

Right now I even bridge WhatsApp and Telegram through matrix because I don't trust those either, though I don't think I trust any company less than Google. But I don't know if you can do that for RCS.

But tbh I'm not looking for any other chat app unless it's federated and I can run my own server. RCS is technically federated but limited to a group of big companies so that's pretty useless to me.

I think I'll just block it just like I do SMS. I turn off all the notifications for the relevant apps.

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lxgr 457 days ago
No chance for bridging RCS to Matrix, as far as I know. That’s what I find so concerning about it: It’s theoretically more open, but practically much more locked down than both SMS and proprietary alternatives.
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wkat4242 457 days ago
Yeah me too. It doesn't help at all to take control away from big tech (really, meta or google is the same difference). And it loops in the phone carriers. You know, those guys that charged us 1 euro for 180 bytes just because they could get away with it. I never ever want those guys in the middle again, just as a raw bit pipe only.

The only thing that's open is the standard, but in practice you need to be on google's radar to be connected. So it's just as closed to us as everything else.

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