• Sem@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    What android application supports RCS except Google Messages? So, for me it is not about “allowing iOS users communicate with Android users”, but about allowing communications between iMessage users and Google Messages users.

    • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Bingo. RCS is yet another proprietary protocol, one controlled by Google and without an open specification. RCS also doesn’t have a standardised approach to encryption as it’s designed for lawful interception.

      So unless Apple have licensed Google’s implementation/extension of RCS, this will be a shitty, insecure way to communicate between the Apple Messages and Google Messages apps and nothing more.

      Google did an impressive job applying pressure and suggesting RCS was a perfect solution when in fact it’s just putting more control in Google’s hands. RCS is not an open “industry” standard. You nor I as individuals can implement it without paying license fees to see the specification and fees to have our implementations tested and accredited.

      And Google have extended GSMA’s RCS with their own features (such as encryption) which is not part of the official standard and they haven’t made open either.

      If Apple had been pressuring Google to implement the iMessage protocol or whatever, we’d have been up in arms (and rightfully so).

      And instead of us all collectively hounding Apple and Google to ditch proprietary protocols and move to open ones such as Matrix, Signal, XMPP, etc (ones where we could all implement, use open source software clients, etc) we’ve got this shit:

      Proprietary, insecure, non-private communication protocols baked into the heart of hundreds of millions of devices that everyone is now going to use by default instead of switching to something safer, private, public, open, auditable, etc etc.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        If Apple had been pressuring Google to implement the iMessage protocol

        Lololol

        Yes and if christians had been pressuring congregations to worship Satan that woulda been super upsetting too.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Nobody said Apple would do that. I don’t know where you got that from.

          They said that if Apple were to use their clout to pressure others into using an Apple-controlled ecosystem, people would be angry about it.

          Yet, because it’s Google not Apple, people are celebrating Google’s RCS as a good thing and them being the good guys.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Aw poor wittle apple twied to make a text standawd but big bad google refused! uWu!

        • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          They never argued that Apple would do that, it was clearly an example to display people’s double standards.

    • tristan
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      5 months ago

      Samsung messages was using RCS since 2012… Years before Google messages adopted it.

      There are others out there that use it but call it by different names like “advanced messaging”, “SMS+” etc

      Google was the first to add e2e encryption and push it hard though, but if you send a RCS message from Google messages to Samsungs messages app, it won’t have e2e, and most likely will be the same with messaging Apple.

      But given how much Apple have fought to make it hard (or at least inconvenient) to message between them, and shut down any apps that made messaging between Apple and Android better, this is a big step for Apple