[akersten]

Perfect I can't wait for the deluge of spam texts with real clickable buttons to trick me instead of just a 320x320 picture of one.

Let's see, RCS:

* needlessly complicated protocol, such that only a behemoth such as Google could administrate it

* Intensely leans on device attestation to even let you on to the network

* Tenfold the multimedia touchpoints as MMS, correspondingly it will have 10x the zero days

* Certainly wiretapped at law enforcement's whim

* Took 15 years to roll out

* And you still get green bubbles on iPhone

I wish we'd all switch to signal and the telcos would get back to being dumb pipes. But no, we need to support Read indicators and ad carousels in our baseband

[the_arun]

What is the difference between RCS & Whatsapp messages? Aren't they similar?

[Elfener]

When you use Whatsapp, you're trusting a single entity to handle your messages (plus your ISP I guess). When you use RCS, your messages go through your mobile operator, google, and perhaps someone else in an overly complicated way that is also built upon SMS (a non-internet thing) for more confusion.

[hocuspocus]

Message payloads go directly to Google servers, there's no difference in practice.

Carriers handle IMS registration, that's it. And not even in all cases.