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It's time to stop texting

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Re: It's time to stop texting

#111

Post by lostlogin »

TylerE wrote: post #107
Rayhem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Kind of a bad example. If I could have a TRUE pots phone, I'd jump on it. Instead all you can get it psuedo-POTS jammed over VoIP. Real POTS in the old days was actually kinda magic. You never had the "everyone talking over everone else" thing you get with any VoIP solution because you don't have a syllable or two (more if using cell) of hidden latency. Other than the audio rolling off everything above about 3.5khz,…

POtS came with other drawbacks too though.

Crappy line, often a fixed handset location (or near fixed) rather than direct to the individual.

Multiples calls were usually not handled, mum would use the phone when I wanted the internet…

Re: It's time to stop texting

#112

Post by mfuzzey »

Here in France very few people use SMS to talk with friends.

They are now mostly just used by companies to send short notifications (like if you drop your car off at a repair place they'll send you a SMS when its ready to pick up). It's good enough for quick one offs like that and not much else.

Most people use whatsapp and some signal or telegram.

The US seems to be pretty backwards on technology. Chip based payment cards have been universal here since the 90s (maybe even before) while the US was still on magstripe for decades.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#113

Post by digitallyfree »

josephcsible wrote: post #16

There's one gigantic advantage to SMS that no alternative app has come close to matching: your phone number is yours, so even if Verizon decides to drop you as a customer, you can move to one of their competitors and still be able to receive messages from everyone you could before. If you use WhatsApp and Meta decides to ban you, you're out of luck unless you gave a second means of communication to everyone you used…

Meta, Google, etc. also sometimes randomly ban accounts for reasons unknown (AI detecting "suspicious" behavior, etc.), whereas I have never heard of phone companies doing this.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#114

Post by ploum »

lostlogin wrote: post #110
Rayhem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> Problem: I need to contact a new acquaintance. Solution? Talk about messaging apps. Find the intersection of the ones you both use. This is the beautiful thing about phone numbers. The likes of iMessage will use iMessage if both users have it. Imagine a world where one app could use sms, iMessage, WhatsApp, Snapchat etc. It’ll never happen, but I can dream.

Signal on Android is doing just that and I love it. But they announced that they will remove that feature due to too many users thinking that an SMS sent with Signal is secure (despite an open lock displayed next to the message)

Re: It's time to stop texting

#115

Post by thefz »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #79
ariehkovler wrote: post #42

I 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.

Came here to post the same. 90% of my messaging is WhatsApp, 10% Telegram. The only thing I use SMS for is 2FA and even that is dying out in favour of push notifications.

Or authenticators, such as Authy or Google Auth.

Haven't used SMS in 10 years. I had to send a SMS to opt out of one of my carrier's options and I had to do the whole setup for Adnroid's Messages app because I have never opened it.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#116

Post by allemagne »

pwinnski wrote: post #83
klodolph wrote: post #70

> 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?

It's counter-factual fantasy. The color of the chat bubbles are blue when your messages are sent using E2E-secure full-featured iMessage, and green otherwise. It's your chat bubbles, by the way; messages you receive are always gray, regardless of how they were sent to you. It's not just PR, it's an important signal.

Full quote:

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

>I can’t say Apple doesn’t enjoy that dynamic. But by now, you know there’s a lot more to the green vs. blue bubbles than perception. The difference in color represents a very real difference in functionality, technology, and privacy

Like you (and the author) said it's the Blue "E2E-secure full-featured iMessage" versus the Green less-featured, less-reliable SMS, and the ONLY way into the "important signal" of Blue is for your conversational partner to buy a (more expensive) iPhone. It's wrong and reductive to pretend that it's "just" a PR tactic, but in the same vein we don't have to pretend that security and user experience is the only benefit Apple gets from this.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#117

Post by tw20212021 »

jawns wrote: post #100

There are two things that keep my wife and me tethered to Google Chat as our primary means of texting each other: 1) Search. This is the big one. The fact that I don't even need to differentiate between email and chat when I need to search for something is highly valuable. Plus, its search functionality is just in general very solid. Go figure. 2) Integration into GMail. During the workday, it's more convenient for m…

Whatsapp? I also liked Hangouts, but they botched it.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#118

Post by ploum »

LarryMullins wrote: post #103
theonlybutlet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the rest of the world the answer is simply Whatsapp. China it's WeChat. No need to discuss. You can also see if their contact is in the app.

It's very confusing to me that Europe seems generally skeptical of big American tech, but has evidently jumped straight into bed with Facebook's WhatsApp with far more enthusiasm than Americans.

Maybe because most of the initial success was before Facebook bought Whatsapp. Until recently, lot of people were ignoring that their whatsapp was part of facebook (but those people were also using facebook messenger anyway).

Germany and Switzerland have some exotic secure messengers that were quite popular (and may still be) like threema.

There was also some quite suprizing stuff. My inlaws were, until recently, using Viber. They didn’t know why (none of them are computer people). It was wild to me to discover a chat app I never heard off in a circle of people completely outside of tech.

Anyway, the only longterm solution is an open standard. Propably XMPP. Or email after all (it works, look at delta chat).

Re: It's time to stop texting

#120

Post by irjoe »

LarryMullins wrote: post #103
theonlybutlet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the rest of the world the answer is simply Whatsapp. China it's WeChat. No need to discuss. You can also see if their contact is in the app.

It's very confusing to me that Europe seems generally skeptical of big American tech, but has evidently jumped straight into bed with Facebook's WhatsApp with far more enthusiasm than Americans.

It was already fairly popular in the UK prior to being acquired by Facebook.
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