Just use one of the many alternative SMS apps?

They don’t support RCS. Plus, SMS is transmitted unencrypted. If you care about privacy of conversations then SMS is not it. You either: Give in (what I did) and use Google Messages with RCS or use something like Signal and convince everyone your regularly message to use it too.

Quik Messages is a good non Google alternitive

I like RCS. I hate it was kidnapped by Google and they’re the only ones hosting the servers instead of the carriers as it was supposed to be. Instead of the agnostic infrastructure we were supposed to have, we got another corporate monopoly hell scape.

Was it kidnapped? Or did the carriers basically dump it on the fire stations doorstep? Not really googles fault if every carrier was too lazy to run their own RCS servers…

Yeah, the reality is the only way is was going to happen was if someone like Google made it happen. RCS was dying on the vine for many years. The carriers were never going to implement it.

Which is surprising when you look at Europe. Europe made text messaging too costly early on and everyone switched to WhatsApp. You’d think Europe would try to win people back with RCS but instead… Nothing?

Why? People expect SMS to be free these days, it’s only added costs for the carrier to implement RCS. That’s the problem.

Then federate, decentralize it, or abandon it to die. Let’s not pretend Google is saving something sacred like a baby’s life. They took up RCS to compete with Apple. This is not a tragedy, it was made this way by design.

or abandon it to die

a tactic Google is supremely familiar with

I like that my Apple messages client can now participate in encrypted RCS chats. It’s still green boxes though. No competition, just raised the floor a little from SMS as the basic service

Google didn’t develop RCS, GSMA did. All google did was purchase the startup that actually developed a good implementation of it.

This isnt some gatekeeping exercise from google, they had nothing to do with RCS’s initial design and release. The carriers are entirely to blame for dragging their feet, although some are finally implementing their own servers (China is entirely RCS without google).

As for “federate it, decentralise it”, thats how it already is. Its called “hubbing”, but its basically federation. The networks run their server, and the federate messages between them. It isn’t centralised at all.

Never said they developed it. They bought it for a reason though.

Can we self-host a RCS server and hub with all the RCS network?

They bought an implementation of RCS, the standard is still open. They even sell there implementation to a few telcos.

You cant self host it because you need to be a telco, it has telco specific protocols.

Your looking for a conspiracy/monopoly that for once, doesnt exist due to Google being malicious. It exists because telcos are shit.

Two entities can be shit, and also malicious, at the same time.

Google has historically done a lot of good things. Today they simply do evil, but pushing for RCS adoption when telcos refused to is one of those good things they did.

You can still hate Google and want them to disappear, I do, but that doesn’t mean you automatically hate everything ever touched by them. Their motivation may have been strictly to compete with Apple, but e2ee messages are a net positive if you must use it. Use signal and matrix when you can, use RCS when you must.

Google didn’t buy it, it’s an open standard.

What google did is host RCS infrastructure and have the worlds most popular messaging client.

You can absolutely setup an RCS server, build an FCS client that has the appropriate keys and access, put RCS relays in important peering points a over the world, and roll that out to millions of ppl yourself.

Sort of like nuclear power; you could probably build a reactor yourself, but it’s a heavy lift plus there are players that don’t want you to.

So, what you’re saying is… no. Gotcha.

I know what you mean, it’s frustrating that this happened by google being the 800lb gorilla.

Same thing happened to email, we now only have a handful of providers even though email is an open standard.

I heard RCS was due to open up any day now. I heard that like 5 years ago. I want to be able to use Textra (or other 3rd party texting apps) again. I fucking hate that I’m locked into Google messages if I want to be able to send high res photos and whatnot to my non-techy friends and family.

Here’s the problem: you’re using Google Messages.

Are there any good alternatives that also have things like spam filtering?

Textra was good when I was using Android. Not sure about content filtering, though

You mean blacklisting? Fossify SMS. Or any chat app.

He means actual spam filtering, you simply don’t get messages from spam/scam as Google looks up a database of known bad actors and filters then out

What country are you living in to need spam filtering for SMS?

Weird

I’m not sure þere’s even an RCS client for my Linux phone.

cupboardunderscore.github.io/ios-rcs/e2ee/

RCS is absolut bullshit. You take an „open standard“ and let 100 company’s implement a closed source solution for it that needs to be kept updated so that all features work across all platforms. Oh hey I want to write from TMobile to some cheap third party service, ups they don’t support it…. E2EE? Beta or not implemented. OpenSource apps are also rare.

And once again a chat protocol that Google touched and it was turned into golden shit. Congrats

I like RCS, but this is going to be a huge problem for folks without a data plan. SMS works without data, but RCS requires it

I would imagine sms would always remain as a fallback.

i never use it, why would I ? I use Quick SMS for the very occasional 2FA SMS and all other messaging is via Signal.