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It's time to stop texting

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Re: It's time to stop texting

#141

Post by schvenk »

_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…

> Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great.

That hasn't been my experience. Often it does. And then sometimes it doesn't. My sense is that when it doesn't, it's because of the interdependence on SMS.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#142

Post by valarauko »

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…

> if you use WhatsApp and Meta decides to ban you

Genuine Q: is this something that ever happens?

Re: It's time to stop texting

#143

Post by rglullis »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #65
ariehkovler wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Today you are one of the lucky 10000:

- https://matrix.org

- https://jabber.org

Re: It's time to stop texting

#144

Post by progval »

mfuzzey wrote: post #112

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…

These threads are always full of "here in $country, everyone uses $protocol" statements as if one's experience is representative of their country.

I'm in France too, and only use SMS with friends and family. My mom asks me from time to time to install Whatsapp, but that's it.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#145

Post by schvenk »

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…

I didn't talk much about Google Chat in the article, but I think it's a fine example of a non-E2EE messenger in the same bucket as Telegram, from a company that tends to demonstrate a better-than-average respect for user data (with the disclosure that I worked there at one point).

If you're using it and liking it, I personally wouldn't recommend switching. I didn't recommend it because at this point I don't trust Google to continue investing in it given multiple incarnations of Hangouts, prior Chat products, Allo, etc.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#146

Post by tomjen3 »

pwinnski wrote: post #92

It's time to stop using RSS for podcasts, instead let's use Spotify. It's time to stop using https, instead let's use a new protocol owned by Facebook to visit web pages. It's time to stop using IRC, instead let's use Slack. It's time to stop using email, instead let's use a proprietary messaging app. OR let's not commit everything to corporate-controlled protocols and platforms, and keep SMS, RSS, HTTPS, email, and…

SMS is controlled by your carrier and it spies on you.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#147

Post by schvenk »

pkulak wrote: post #62

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. :/

iMessage is indeed more secure than Telegram. Dunno vs. WhatsApp, but unlike WhatsApp it has a central message archive (and as of a few weeks ago, you can end-to-end encrypt that, too, I think).

It pained me not to be able to recommend iMessage but because it's not supported on Android, Windows, or Linux, you fall back to SMS (for Android) or nothing at all (for Linux/Windows) and then it's far worse than Telegram.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#148

Post by valarauko »

heikkile wrote: post #98

My library sends me a SMS when my books are due. My doctor sends me a SMS to remind me of the appointment. My bank sends me a SMS to tell me that they have sent me mail in the banking app. The delivery man sends me a SMS to tell that my stuff is on the way... They all do this because they know that SMS just works for (almost) anyone who has a phone number. SMS will not die until all those big systems can trust that t…

I think SMS works for those use cases as a one way notification, and no further interaction is usually needed.

Here in the US my doctor's office sends me an automated reminder SMS before appointments, and the functionality is limited to replying yes or no to confirm. For the use case it has, it works fine.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#149

Post by schvenk »

ngrilly wrote: post #80

Great write up, and I agree with most of the article, in particular regarding SMS shortcomings, Signal and WhatsApp, but I’m not sure why I should trust Telegram *more* than mobile networks operators when messages are not E2E encrypted.

To clarify: I'm not suggesting you trust Telegram more than mobile providers--if SMS were encrypted in transit I'd have a much weaker case against it. But the point is, with Telegram you're placing trust in Telegram. With SMS you're placing trust in your mobile provider, AND your friends' mobile providers, AND an unknown collection of other entities. At a minimum, that's a lot more points of weakness, even if each individual one is equally trustworthy.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#150

Post by JustSomeNobody »

What people who don't like SMS miss the most in these discussions is that cellular signals still have holes. I get great coverage at home. 1 Mile away, near the kids' school is a dead zone. Literally the only thing I can get out is an SMS message because it doesn't use data (it uses the control channel).

No app can compete with that.

However, I must say that in full coverage areas, Signal is my goto.

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