SMS is from an era when the focus was on protocols, not apps. Unfortunately that era seem unlikely to return.
"Unfortunately"? How do you figure?
Like how Google abandoned XMPP.
It's time to stop texting
41–50 of 206 posts
Re: It's time to stop texting
#42I don't think I've sent an SMS in more than five years. But outside of the US, everyone uses WhatsApp with E2E encryption baked in.
Re: It's time to stop texting
#43This is silly, most people have never even heard of Signal or Telegram, and only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp. I could either immediately message anyone over fast and reliable SMS, but I should instead ask them to install some app first? Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. If the other person happens to have an iPhone (as most of my contacts do), they automatically get all these m…
> only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp
In many countries, EVERYONE has WhatsApp. In Israel it's how your boss, your work team, your kid's daycare, businesses and government offices communicate with you.
Re: It's time to stop texting
#44People would stop texting if there were a common protocol for messaging not on SMS. I'm sure they exist, but until WhatsApp can communicate with WeChat etc, texting is unlikely to go away. This is one of the few areas where government mandated bridges may be required to allow for interoperability.
Maybe I'm being naive, but isn't that just email?
Re: It's time to stop texting
#45Stop using SMS? Pssh. Lots of stuff still relies on POCSAG paging, which has not been entirely replaced by SMS for much the same reason that SMS will never be entirely replaced by third-party apps.
Re: It's time to stop texting
#46I cannot remember last time I sent an SMS. Seems like SMS is still very much alive in US
Re: It's time to stop texting
#47email still rules! In every way described in the article. The fact that socially, one is "laughable" is really a laugh at the tech illiterate. A good email client and server, offering instantaneous message transfer and notification is infinitely more secure and functional than any "messaging" "app". A tech savvy person can easily run their own mail server, or migrate their history from one vendor to another. Try that…
I get what you're saying but the UI and UX of email is a wreck and a half even with a good client. And simple-but-powerful applications like messaging should appeal to the lowest common denominator if they want to be effective and usable.
good news! the delta chat application is available for PC, Mac, Android, iphone and gives you signal-style clients but powered by (encrypted if you want) email messages.
Re: It's time to stop texting
#48I understand the concerns that they are bringing up, but I feel like saying just download another app completely misses the point of my SMS is so popular. It is just... there. It does what I need it to do without standing in my way of communicating. It is also a standard that is not at the whim of a specific company shutting down a major service (that I am aware of) to continue communicating. I struggled for a while…
Yes, I don't think replacing SMS with a private company/single organisation as the messaging platform provider is the solution (which is why I also count out WhatsApp also, despite currently relying on it heavily to communicate with Android users). I think in the end we need a cross-platform messaging protocol that replaces SMS/MMS that is not reliant on a single app vendor, provides end-to-end encryption and will be…
TBH I don't know the last part either. I just see it being said time and time again that I have started to assume it is true.
But I do find the idea weird that they would jump through the hoops for it unless there is a major reason for it. Like we (US) had unlimited SMS a while ago that I think also helped.
Re: It's time to stop texting
#49Re: It's time to stop texting
#50This is silly, most people have never even heard of Signal or Telegram, and only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp. I could either immediately message anyone over fast and reliable SMS, but I should instead ask them to install some app first? Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. If the other person happens to have an iPhone (as most of my contacts do), they automatically get all these m…
> only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp In many countries, EVERYONE has WhatsApp. In Israel it's how your boss, your work team, your kid's daycare, businesses and government offices communicate with you.
It's not ideal to give Facebook that much control over communications.