As long Google keep it proprietary, you have to assume it’s not good for privacy. Google lies about privacy all of the time. It’s barely been two months since the last time they were found guilty. This is how they operate. It’s just a business expense.
It’s not proprietary, it’s an open standard from the GSMA. Stop spreading this nonsense.
Google’s default implementation IS proprietary, so while the spec isn’t, the mass-adopted deployment is. Google is in the middle, unless you use a different app (if that’s even possible, I don’t know as I don’t Android).
Privacy win? RCS itself does not support E2EE. Google developed a proprietary extension for RCS to include their “E2EE”.
Looks like that might be changing https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/article/rcs-encryption-a-leap-towards-secure-and-interoperable-messaging/
when google and apple are involved, i doubt we can count on it being “a win for privacy”, at best a sidegrade because secure messengers already exist.
We had this in XMPP a decade ago & they could have readopted the open standard instead of creating a new one. There is no track record of them not bending the rules to benefit just them anyhow—but this time it was developed exclusively by the tech giants which is absolutely for their benefit with nestled enclaves to meet the bare minimum requirements while still building the garden’s walls higher. Cabal-ass behavior.
XMPP is very much a valid option nowadays too! Much easier and lighter to host than Matrix, too. I use it with my mom - Conversations is just as easy to use as Whatsapp, and maybe more pleasant.
Nobody wins, this is marketing trying to be news
bingo yeah. signal and others have always existed.
I can sort of see why it’s not been a priority for them. Outside of the US nobody uses SMS or the built in text apps. I just went through my phone and I haven’t had a text message that wasn’t business related since July.
It was honestly surprising to learn that SMS/RCS/iMessage is the most common way to send messages in the US, as it hasn’t been that way in the UK for over a decade now.
For better or worse, folks in the UK & EU all switched to apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber, etc. due to better features and free international calls.
It seems like RCS is finally mature enough to compete, but good luck getting folks to move back.
Why are meta products so popular in Europe?
Outside the US, most carriers charged per text message, but basic data wasn’t usage-billed. You could send as many Whatsapp messages as you wanted.
WhatsApp wasn’t a Meta product when it originally took off; Meta didn’t even exist at the time. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, and already had hundreds of millions of users at the time.
Outside of the US nobody uses SMS or the built in text apps.
Which is for the best, since SMS is insecure.
Remind me again when there is a FOSS application for RCS messaging
They treat this as if e2ee was the privacy grail but it’s only marketing to fool people believing they’re protected.
The actual contents of the messages aren’t as important for privacy. It’s the Metadata and a ton of other measures rhay signal implements in their family of protocols.
Talking about e2ee and call it private shows ignorance in what privacy entails.
Good enough to protect against your bank verification codes from being intercepted, as long as the bank also uses RCS’s Encryption to send the message.
