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It's time to stop texting

dfeldman.medium.com

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Re: It's time to stop texting

#61

Post by px43 »

_yb2s wrote: post #25

This 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…

It would have been so easy for Apple to just be cool and follow some open standards rather than building their own proprietary network to drive a wedge in global messaging networks.

It seems to me that the only reason SMS is still a thing is Apple pushing iMessage on everyone, and SMS is the only way anyone can talk to someone using iMessage without buying into Apple's silly closed ecosystem.

I have Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and even Messages with RCS etc on my phone, and the only people I ever talk to over SMS are iPhone users. Even worse, Apple does everything they can to make communications between iPhone and Android users look like shit to drive in some sense of superiority and pressure iPhone users to stay on the platform.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#62

Post by pkulak »

This is all well and good, but for me, it's not SMS. No one uses SMS. It's iMessage. And iMessage is absolutely more secure than Telegram, and probably even Whatsapp, so all these arguments fall flat for me.

Personally, I hate iMessage because, while I have an iPhone, everything else is Linux. But that's not really an argument I can make to literally every single person I ever interact with. :/

Re: It's time to stop texting

#63

Post by mongol »

faddyfadfad wrote: post #33
mongol wrote: post #18

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?

The best parts of the internet are due to standardized , open protocols: RFCs, HTML, SMTP and so on. It is the neccessary foundation without there would be no internet.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#64

Post by nikeee »

below43 wrote: post #40
nerdjon wrote: post #10

I 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…

I understand the desire to just use the default app. I feel the same for most of the stuff I use.

However, being based on standards is more like being based on the lowest common denominator. Moxie describes the issue pretty good in his post where he explains why signal is not federated (any more):

https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

When talking about things like encryption, RCS isn't that much better, it seems. Correct me if I'm wrong, but encryption is optional for the implementors. That doesn't seem to make it secure by default.

And it's also not Google trying to push to open standards. In the past, Google made multiple attempts to get their own iMessage and did not succeed:

https://www.androidauthority.com/rcs-google-3090142/

It feels like the campaign for RCS ist judt a PR campaign against apple.

Don't get me wrong, I think SMS is dated and I think it needs a replacement with something more modern and open that is not owned by a private company.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#65

Post by Ajedi32 »

ariehkovler wrote: post #43
_yb2s wrote: post #25

This 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.

Which is awesome from a purely technical perspective. The downside is it means your country's communications infrastructure is owned and controlled by Facebook.

If an open protocol version of WhatsApp existed and was universally supported by the default messaging apps on iOS and Android, I'd be all over that.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#67

Post by istillwritecode »

It's time to stop using medium for your blogging. I won't sign up for an account to read stuff - the world already has too many accounts.

I get that the author doesn't want to use SMS. I mostly use signal, but I sometimes use SMS to communicate with people who prefer it. I won't use whatsapp or telegram, for no particular reason other than I don't have to. Some of my friends contact me via twitter messaging - that's even worse in my opinion.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#68

Post by daveslash »

Rayhem wrote: post #19
nerdjon wrote: post #10

I 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…

Yeah, this feels a lot like saying "My god, people, stop using telephones! Facetime has video! And the bitrate ! It's a million times higher! It's 2023, why would anyone use a POTS call?!" Sure, nicer technical specs are...nice, but they're a far, far second to solving a problem. In an sms world: Problem: I need to contact a new acquaintance. Solution: Exchange phone numbers because everyone has them. Text. Or call.…

"My God people, stop using AM/FM Radio! It's an analog signal, and this is a digital world! The quality and bit rate is so low! Use your phone + Spotify + Bluetooth for music! Use your phone + podcasts + Bluetooth for news, talk, and opinion, or switch to satellite radio!"

Problem: In breaking news moments like this, there should be a type of podcast you can listen to in real time, easily accessible for free.

Solution: Radio. You're thinking of Radio.

https://twitter.com/matthewkeyslive/status/12350720664134492...

Re: It's time to stop texting

#69

Post by AshamedCaptain »

jamespwilliams wrote: post #35
johnea wrote: post #12

email 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…

Email falls at the very first hurdle presented in the article (“No privacy whatsoever” applies just as well to email as it does to SMS).

"No privacy whatsoever" is a bit of an stretch of an argument to make, specially when talking to the general public. You have way more privacy when sending a plain text SMS or an email than when sending a physical letter with a wax seal, and most people would argue that the latter is "private" for some definition of the word.

I would even bet that any email leaks that most users would be afraid of are going to be caused by, in this order:

A) The intended email recipient leaking it

B) The email recipient/sender storing a copy of the email at rest (likely unencrypted, even if it was sent encrypted in transit).

C) An official email archiving policy from either the recipient or the sender's organization

And only at at the very bottom of the list "one of the intermediate mail relays being compromised and leaking the email in transit".

Re: It's time to stop texting

#70

Post by klodolph »

> Apple uses the green bubbles as a PR tactic to make Android users seem inferior.

I've heard this sentiment before but it seems nothing short of insane to me. What's the foundation for this?

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