- cross-posted to:
- cybersecurity@sh.itjust.works
- android@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- cybersecurity@sh.itjust.works
- android@lemmy.world
The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
Unfortunately, no matter how good the alternatives are, you are stuck with whatever is on the other end. I can’t force anyone to change their main app for comms. Even if I do manage to get them to install anything else, they will realise they only use it with me and probably drop it next time they change their phone.
While I do agree whatsapp is a privacy nightmare , I also see why it won’t go away anytime soon. You only need someone’s phone number to contact them, you get easy media transfers although compressed to shit, it’s still serviceable and it’s carier independant, and most importantly free even internationaly. People even started using it for audio calls due to higher quality audio over the plain voice calls. All these reasons create the perfect mix for the average privacy-ignorant person to overlook any competitors.