For those who got too excited by the title: read the original messages from the GrapheneOS. RCS de-facto is not an open technology, there’s a massive amount of work and multiple steps are needed to get anywhere near the proper independent implementation. It’s gonna be amazing if the GrapheneOS team pulls it off, but don’t get too excited about the release dates and its availability for other systems (e.g. Linux).
The number of Europeans in here acting like What’s App, which might as well be Facebook Messenger, is some sort of high road is hilarious.
Yeah I still don’t get why people use or promote WhatsApp. If anything, use Signal or even Telegram
I tried to switch over a group of friends and got rebuffed because one of them really likes Whatsapp’s transcription feature. Signal doesn’t offer it. Nobody else cared.
Telegram is worse than even Whatsapp, since it’s not even pretending to be end to end encrypted.
The real choice is signal or threema.
You can’t use Signal or Telegram because your contacts are on WhatsApp, but yes WhatsApp might as well be called Facebook Messenger
Your contacts weren’t always on WhatsApp, stop using it and if they want to talk to you enough they’ll join a better platform. Maybe just keep sending them links every day about how trash WhatsApp and Meta are until they get the point lmao
Already did that, and after two years I’m back on WhatsApp. Everytime you do something at least a bit social it will be a WhatsApp group, you can refuse of course, but believe me, unless it’s really close friends no one is going to put the extra effort to reach you.
The inertia is real.
I have thought this for years. Everyone slimes on Americans for using iMessage and asks who no WhatsApp? Same reason I’m not on facebook, don’t use a meta quest, and don’t use instagram.
While Whatsapp is not great, the problem with iMessage is that it is (was?) locked exclusively to the apple platform
Yeah, thats the main issue with imessage (and it still is) and if your switching from IOS to android, you have to start over on all of your messages unless if you figure out a way to back them up.
It’s not a good solution, but from a meme in c/selfhosting i learned that through the price of a used mac mini (about $120 at that time) you can selfhost iMessage on mac, and selfhost a 3rd party free software called Bluebubbles, which, as far as i can tell, uses Google and Cloudflare services to convey the iMessages to your Android phone.
I’m sure it is a privacy nightmare. But the shunning for not having iMessage from my own family was getting to me, real or imagined.
You’re not self-hosting iMessage. It’s just a bridge between your device and Apple’s iMessage network.
You are self hosting iMessage – you have a machine you own (mac mini) running the iMessage application 24-7, so you can access it on your own client (Android phone).
It’s self hosting a proprietary service with some middleware to access it on the device of your choosing.
Is there a reason we can’t just all use Quik across the de-googled OSes? Vendor specific solutions only further the closed ecosystem problem.
Oh shit. So, grapheneOS is reinventing the wheel, when we have one? Interesting.
Dude, go read a book or something.
Literally everyone should just use Signal. I really don’t understand why we all don’t.
- Dropping SMS support made sense from a security standpoint but slaughtered adoption
- When the central server eshittifies, we’ll all have to switch again.
Because Signal 1) doesn’t ship as default, and 2) requires a login process.
You’ve already lost the majority of the general public with the former. On top of that, the Venn diagram of “people who go through with logging in” and “people who already know about Signal” has significant overlap.
Used to shill XMPP but everyone should use Tox at this point ngl.
- No registration
- No phone number
- It’s impossible to send anything unencrypted
downside: Sharing IDs is annoying (QR code if you are on mobile? idk haven’t tried)
updownsides:
- It does not concern itself with backlog storage (unsent messages sit until at least one device of both parties are online)
- It does not concern itself with file storage (sent - poof, gone)
But the same is true for WhatsApp…
What the fuck is RCS?
Ok so RCS is basically WhatsApp/Signal but Google(+Carriers) but retarded:
- The client software is propiertary and screws you over when you e.g. root your phone
- They finally realized that E2EE exists - 10 years after everyone else implemented it
- You can’t view the docs unless you’re a Google Partner
- The protocol seems to be a mess
- You need a mobile data connection for it to work (sometimes not)
- Knowbody knows how the server software works or can be hosted, everything is “Google Jibe” or needs to connect to it to work
whatsApp […] But retarded
Huh? That’s literally a Meta platform… Doesn’t get much worse than that. I’d sooner just use SMS
AFAIK this is SMS… Well, they are using RCS to hijack it. So you start SMS conversation and if both parties have it enabled or will switch to their protocol. Kind of what iMessage does.
Yeah, I keep RCS disabled on my phone and preferably would replace it with another app, but didn’t know a good alternative.
I think it’s texts for people who don’t use Signal or WhatsApp, so… nobody I have ever met, I guess
it’s trying to extend the sms/mms system
Replace, not extend.
Isn’t that a possible reason why my my
e/OS/phone can’t send text messages, nor call, some numbers. (In France, where many people use meta shit like whatsapp and facebook messenger, and won’t be interested in another messenging app like signal, delta chat, etc)extend only, it will fallback to SMS, and guess what? who the fuck even uses SMS and MMS nowadays?
I am suprised that it took this long to find someone that mentions how RCS will need to fight the network effect of pre existing IM apps thanks to no one using SMS in 2026 (for good reason, it is genuinely garbage and unsafe)
You’re correct. EU users didn’t adopt, or at least continue to utilize, SMS based messaging like users in the US did. This is not a problem for anyone using web based messaging like the ones you mentioned.
I’m quite surprised by the reaction this comment has received, are Americans genuinely still using SMS? Don’t they need to have group chats, send pictures, transfer files, make audio and video calls, or make use of encryption?
I don’t know for sure but my guess is that a lot of US users thought you were wrong because they don’t know that SMS / MMS is essentially dead in the EU. It’s still the primary text based communication method in the US.
MMS supports all the things you mentioned (albeit in a shittier way) except encryption. RCS adds a new layer that is more like Signal in that it supports encryption and emojis and a few other things but it is controlled by Google and there are no open source alternatives currently.
Yes we mainly use SMS and then if both users are on compatible devices they’ll switch to RCS or some other protocol. But most of my texts including spam messages are just plain SMS.
For phone calls i make a phone call.
Sounds like you haven’t met anyone. Or more likely, it’s everyone not-you who is weird.
Genuinely nobody I know has sent an SMS message for at least a decade, who are you still sending SMS to in this day and age when internet-based messengers exist?
Ever heard of older people or just less techy ones? Guess not. I always find it weird when people get on some high horse about sms or any other tech topic. By the way you talk, one would think you literally think hundreds of millions or more people don’t use a texting capability built-in to their phone. But you clearly don’t think that. You apparently just have a need to “other” people who do use it.
Ps. You live in a world where people still use fax machines, checks, floppy disks, and AOL over dialup. People use old tech. It’s not that crazy and much of it has to do with older people not liking change.
Look, I’m not trying to be a smartarse here, I’m genuinely interested in different ways people use technology. I am telling you that every person I know, regardless of age, defaults to using WhatsApp for communications; even my elderly relatives.
Ok, perhaps I misjudged you. For me, even younger people typically don’t use other messengers besides sms. I’ve only ever successfully gotten like 5 people to install signal. The other most popular messengers in the us, Facebook messenger and Whatsapp, are probably much worse for privacy than sms, due to meta ownership.
Yeah I’ve got about half of my friends and family using Signal, but when even a single one refuses then the whole group chat ends up staying in WhatsApp. WhatsApp does at least seem better than Facebook messenger though, as it allegedly implements the Signal protocol so should still be E2E encrypted. “Allegedly”, because it’s closed source and run by the trustworthy philanthropists as Facebook who I’m sure are data mining as much as they can from it, but I think people would have found out if it was a total lie. Still better than SMS though which may as well be public.
Where in the world are you? I speak for the UK when I talk about WhatsApp being the de-facto messenger. How do people do group chats or send files if they’re still using SMS?
Good. Everything Google touches needs to be forked.
Fork Google
2 weeks now on Graphene. This is what a phone OS should be, simple, boring, juste the basics without a shit-ton of bloatware and spying crap.
This has been available since forever, though. Cyanogenmod/LineageOS was the biggest. Oneplus followed along and I love my OP15, though that’s coming to a bitter end
Cyanogenmod and LineageOS have always felt like hacks upon hacks and always had something broken. While I have my gripes with GOS it’s truly the first time since I have had a custom ROM that just works through and through.
Lineage pales in comparison to what cyanogenmod was
Lineage was forked from the remains of CM. Without Lineage, CM would have died and faded from memory already.
Lol, lineage did nothing to stop that
Ok?
As a basic sms user, is RCS the reason my conversations now sometimes get flooded with messages like, “so-and-so loved this”?
If you’re on Android, the Textra app handles most of the emojis on messages without needing RCS. Sadly it still doesn’t work with reactions to images yet.
Looks like scamware, only available on Play Store, and it doesn’t look like it’s open-source. I wouldn’t go near that.
Why? You aren’t confortable with a random guy developing an app having access to your conversations or to your 2FA codes from your bank?
TBF I used it for a couple of years, tho I don’t anymore. It’s a good app. Didn’t get robbed or murdered.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! I’ve been busy, ok?!? Now if you could stop moving, I can’t aim!!
I hope it’s functionally installable on other versions of android
