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I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#71

Post by darrenf »

IshKebab wrote: post #32
modo_mario wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is still rather common here in Europe. Even if a ton of people use whatsapp and such SMS is often a safe option to initiate with or something trough which you get certain kinds of automated messages like appointment reminders or verification codes.

Which countries? It has zero use in the UK (apart from for stuff like parcel deliveries and 2FA). We're 100% WhatsApp.

It's down from the peak, but 40 billion SMSes were sent in the UK in 2021. I would be staggered if this number was majority B2C/2FA.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271561/number-of-sent-sm...

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#72

Post by m000 »

The "there's no RCS API" sounds more like an excuse or at least a pretty shallow take. There is none now. But chances are that there will be an RCS API in the near future.

E.g. EU countries are split between plain SMS and WhatsApp as the preferred messaging platform for automated interactions with services. Google not offering an RCS API would be like pushing everyone to use WhatsApp for automated interactions. Would Google risk that? Probably not.

By pulling the plug from SMS support now, Signal just makes it certain that they will lose user base, no matter what Google does.

And it is also kind of disrespectful to anyone who spent their personal time advocating the use of Signal to friends and family.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#73

Post by 2b3a51 »

IshKebab wrote: post #32
modo_mario wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is still rather common here in Europe. Even if a ton of people use whatsapp and such SMS is often a safe option to initiate with or something trough which you get certain kinds of automated messages like appointment reminders or verification codes.

Which countries? It has zero use in the UK (apart from for stuff like parcel deliveries and 2FA). We're 100% WhatsApp.

My experience of mobile messaging the UK is different to yours as might be expected in a country of 60+ million.

The stats show a significant drop as mobile data became cheaper and richer services became available, but still quite a lot of traffic.

I suspect that the people I see using Nokia and Samsung dumb phones will continue to use SMS, so traffic will fall to a sustained tail.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271561/number-of-sent-sm...

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#74

Post by izacus »

jbverschoor wrote: post #30
joel35 wrote: post #21

With Signal moving away from SMS, the required messaging app stack on my phone just to be able to receive everything sent do me will have to be: - Signal -> Close friends & family I've convinced to use it. - WhatsApp -> Most of my friends. - SMS -> School notifications, 2FA, shipping updates, etc. - Facebook Messenger -> Elderly relatives - Telegram -> That one relative who wants to use this instead of Signal. Is the…

I never understood Telegram. It's insecure by default, runs in a different jurisdiction. It's not even anonymous But somehow people started using it because it was "more secure" than whatsapp.

> I never understood Telegram.

Telegram has amazing user experience. It's available for any platform, the messages are always backed up, the apps are high quality and responsive and they have great features for group messaging and group organization. They even give you a library you can build your own Telegram client with.

It's *great to use* - something that Signal people never prioritized and always rather pushed their sometimes horrible preferences down peoples throats.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#75

Post by quacksilver »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #12

SMS integration is a lost opportunity in so many ways. I wanted a no-code solution to push my bank-sent SMSs into a real-time transaction database. Apparently this is impossible on iOS, and on Android it's incredibly unreliable (IFTTT & Tasker keep getting shut down by the OS). Fortunately, before writing my own solution, I found messages.google.com/web. I have to scrape this, but that's simpler than maintaining an A…

Have you tried Twilio or some similar SMS solution that doesn't involve your phone. Admittedly this costs money but potentially you could use a number there to consume everything.

Alternatively if you are in Europe/UK the openbanking API is quite widely used now

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#76

Post by izacus »

secret-noun wrote: post #43

> RCS (Rich Communications Services) is coming Has there been any new press on this? The last nugget I heard was https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ , which didn't really announce any progress.

Besides being available and enabled by default on pretty much all Android phones these days?

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#77

Post by filoleg »

persedes wrote: post #49
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

Where are you getting 80% among young people? A quick google search only returned numbers around 55% among younger people. That's a looong way from a de-facto iOS only country.

Recent thread[0] about it.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33169684

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#78

Post by black_puppydog »

Can someone ELI5 the RCS thing for me? I don't get it...

From the answer and the wikipedia page it sounds like this might be a decision that the other side's client (SIM? carrier?) makes, to reply via RCS.

And my device would be able to receive this only via data connection? Or would my carrier detect that I'm not currently in 4G covered area (middle of Germany for example...) and send the text via regular SMS?

I'm a bit worried by the first point, really. What does that mean for e.g. pinephones or google free android? Do I risk silently missing text messsages?

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#79

Post by jillesvangurp »

modo_mario wrote: post #22
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

SMS is still rather common here in Europe. Even if a ton of people use whatsapp and such SMS is often a safe option to initiate with or something trough which you get certain kinds of automated messages like appointment reminders or verification codes.

It's still used in that sense but it's very rarely used for actually sending texts between people.

Basically, SMS used to be a big revenue driver for operators. That business has dried up almost completely. The notion of paying per message is just completely gone. So, operators stopped caring about SMS a long time ago. In the same way, call minutes are increasingly less relevant. It's all about 4G and internet now.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#80

Post by m000 »

apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

> With the US going (almost) full iMessage and the rest of the world having already settled on another app there simply no point to supporting SMS.

I think you just described the core of the problem: Signal has a very US-centric view of the market, and has no clue that SMS is actually still relevant elsewhere, and a low-hanging fruit for capturing user-base.

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