2y ago

Google Messages turning on RCS by default, group E2E encryption launches

9to5google.com

77 comments

Only "benefit" of RCS I've seen is the avalanche of spam from companies. I'll be turning it off. Don't text that much anyway.
- How do you get so much spam? Where are you from? I want to understand since usually I get no spam at all...
  
  Apparently it's a problem in some countries. I have read many Indians complaining, for example. I myself have never received any spam though (Europe).
- Can confirm. With rcs on I get more messages from fucking insurance companies than my own people. Fuck Google and fuck their products.
- i mean sms messages are extremely expensive and when you need to contact someone over sms rcs can be a life saver
  
  I didn't know you could even get a phone subscription without unlimited calls, sms, and mms anymore.
  After a bit of looking I couldn't find any subscription without it.
  
  I actually have a dirt cheap $15/mo Public Mobile Canada plan that has 250MB data and 100 minutes.... and even that has unlimited SMS.
  
  It's literally the cheapest plan I can find anywhere that includes any data. I can get $8/mo for unlimited talk and text but zero data.
  
  well I'm in ukraine, don't know anything about us.
  yeah, all plans have unlimited calls (within the same carrier) but not sms (which usually cost around 2 cents/message) here
  sms is basically dead anyway... (it's basically just a confirmation code delivery system)
  
  That's so strange! Here in the US lots of people still use sms, and it's free/included unlimited in all the plans. I have heard previously other countries like in Asia and stuff, don't really use sms either though, so that's interesting to me...
  
  SMS has been free in the UK for a long time but nobody uses it, I think WhatsApp killed it around 2010ish. I think the main drivers for people switching to WhatsApp from SMS were:
  Works with WiFi when you have no network signal. A lot of times, especially back then, phone signal would be almost non existent inside larger buildings, especially older buildings where the walls are like 1metre thick.
  Way way faster and more responsive, you can see when it's sent, received and read
  Can send pictures and messages! You could do it via MMS but that was (and is today) expensive (it's like £0.50 per message according to my contract). Plus MMS was slow, sometimes messages wouldn't send, or they'd get sent to an email inbox provided by the phone network, and/or they'd arrive days later.
  Group chats
  It's also interesting that the top comment here mentions wanting SMS fallback. For me it would bug the hell out of me if it did fallback, I'd rather the message just not send.

77 comments