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Google is silently blocking RCS messages on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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RCS a decade ago, cool. RCS today? Dead.
WhatsApp is the defacto messaging over data globally. If you live anywhere outside the Murican bubble, SMSs are not used for anything and iMessage isn't even a thing people with iCrap devices care about. Everyone, on every platform, uses WhatsApp. Governmental services, private companies, and all the people use WhatsApp.
The only text messages SMS I get nowadays are from Americans that don't understand anything else and American businesses that use them for 2FA which is super insecure and equally stupid.
i will never use WhatsApp
Signal?
I'm not saying what is good to use. I'm saying what is used. Everyone from grandma to the local store. If you want to survive communicating, you need to use WhatsApp everywhere in the world except the idiotic USA.
I personally use other apps like signal and telegram, but I also have WhatsApp because I have to and it is convenient enough. I'm ok that Meta gets a bit of data showing the amazon delivery driver and I shared a message at a certain time. It's useless data.
I'm trying to get friends into using manyverse myself. I'm trying to get away from corporate owned social media as much as possible, which is why I'm typing this right now on Lemmy.
You can try but rarely is it successful unless you're a super popular influencer. If Mr. Beast came out with a platform and said use it, he'd get a million users in a day, all of them evangelizing to their friend groups and maybe it would take off. Otherwise you're just going to get ignored unless it's easy enough.
WhatsApp is easy enough and good enough. It is not the best solution, but part of its allure is that it is owned by a big corporation. Governments and billion dollar companies use WhatsApp as their backbone because it is big. They aren't going to roll their own.
And when someone is completely against WhatsApp... Why? If it's because you hate Zuck and Meta, then fine. Personal grudges are fine with me, but not a valid reason to dislike the platform for everyone, just yourself. The data that they get is who you are sending messages to, when, and the overall size. Everything else can be blocked. The content of the messages is secure unless you decrypt and backup elsewhere. One of my WhatsApp numbers is on a number from a VoIP line not even tied to my name or ID in any way. Meta collects information that I am talking to hundreds of delivery drivers arranging my deliveries. I'm ok with that.
They don't have any of my info. I don't have any social media accounts apart from Lemmy and a now retired reddit. Works well enough. And the older people can use it easily enough. Getting my mother to switch to telegram? Isn't happening. But WhatsApp... She's down for that.
I was just talking about my friend group which is quite small. I don't really want to hear from people outside of that.
you had me in the first line
but no thanks Facebook app
Not a defense of Meta, just saying what's used. And if the option is completely insecure SMS or RCS vs WhatsApp, WhatsApp is a clear winner. If you could push everyone to a better app like a signal or telegram, sure. But the world is on WhatsApp. And if you look at how hard it is to get Americans off of SMS or iMessage, that's the issue you have with now 2 billion people minimum to get them to use a better more secure platform. And their perceived benefit for that trouble is near zero.
Do you have any numbers to back this up? My understanding is this is a very eurocentric truth, but I don't actually know the state of messaging apps in Asia, south america, or central and southern Africa.
Anecdotally it's obvious everywhere you go. I travel all over the world often and it's always WhatsApp. The taxi drivers, the hotel people, everyone.
For actual studies I found a handful with a quick google that confirm it. Whatsapp reported 2 billion users in 2020. And then WeChat is the next which is China centric. Nobody uses standard SMS except Americans.
https://engage.sinch.com/blog/most-popular-messaging-apps-in-the-world/