I understand the concerns that they are bringing up, but I feel like saying just download another app completely misses the point of my SMS is so popular.
It is just... there. It does what I need it to do without standing in my way of communicating. It is also a standard that is not at the whim of a specific company shutting down a major service (that I am aware of) to continue communicating.
I struggled for a while after my mom got an iPhone for her to understand the App Store. I feel like she may not fully be there but is using an iPad now solely instead of a computer so its close...ish.
Maybe this is because I do use an iPhone and most people I communicate with are using iMessage that I just don't see the other issues mentioned here. But because I use iMessage, if for some reason apple were to shut down that service... I would just revert back to using SMS and communication will mostly just continue.
Finally... If I want to start talking to a new friend I meet at the bar. I just give them my number, no conversation about which app they use or OS ever needs to happen.
Edit: I know countries outside of the US are less dependent on SMS/iMessage. But it just feels like jumping through extra hoops for something that is built in.
Yeah, this feels a lot like saying "My god, people, stop using telephones! Facetime has video! And the bitrate! It's a million times higher! It's 2023, why would anyone use a POTS call?!" Sure, nicer technical specs are...nice, but they're a far, far second to solving a problem.
In an sms world:
Problem: I need to contact a new acquaintance.
Solution: Exchange phone numbers because everyone has them. Text. Or call.
In a post-sms world:
Problem: I need to contact a new acquaintance.
Solution? Talk about messaging apps. Find the intersection of the ones you both use. Rank by favorite if it's not an empty set, then decide on the relative merits of choosing one in the middle of both your lists, otherwise attempt evangelism. Following evangelism, regress to "Yeah, admittedly the UI has some quirks -- here's how you do <thing you want to do>."
Unfortunately, tech bro progress-at-all-costs featurejerking very often leaves a very large number of people out of the party. The elderly. The impoverished. etc. Despite the corporate mantra of all features all the time, we can actually elect to take old things and make them better instead of inventing the new hot thing all the time.
I am a bit mad at myself for not even thinking about that. I know people who still use flip phones and this basically segments them out even further.
I think we just need to look at AIM, MSN, whatever yahoo's was called. I think there is a good reason that those were very quickly replaced by just SMS. Even though I would argue that in many ways those were superior to SMS and had features that we really did not get until iMessage (for better or for worse) but we already went through this once and SMS won out.
>I am a bit mad at myself for not even thinking about that. I know people who still use flip phones and this basically segments them out even further
Don't worry, you're in good company - increasingly a gigantic amount of systems just assume that you have a smart phone and are willing to use it to do everything. And that you are fine having everything tracked and logged because you did it digitally. The assumption of "everyone has phones" is absolutely absurd, and it's way too wide spread. The final evolution of this is "cashless" stores/restaurants, where you literally cannot exchange money for goods and services without having a bank account and a smart phone.
I'm not so startled by the number of systems that assume you have a smart phone - most adults do - but am startled by the number of systems that assume you have access to a keyboard/mouse/monitor.
I have PCs at home and at work and a laptop that travels with me. I use these computers to do things like filling out forms, shopping, composing emails, reading PDFs, filing taxes, tracking my calendar, and otherwise interacting with businesses and governments that use computers.
A shocking number of my friends and family do all of these things on their smartphones. They're not impoverished, they might have a PC at work but none at home, they might even have an old laptop they haven't booted up in years...but they'll suffer through side-scrolling a PDF or typing on a ~3" square display (the top of their 6" display, with the bottom used for a touchscreen keyboard).
> I know people who still use flip phones and this basically segments them out even further.
We aren't all impoverished, it can be a conscious decision.
I like how SMS just works, it's far from perfect but feels closer to an independent tool, like a hammer - with the expectation that each time you pull it out of a toolbox it will continue to remain a hammer - other than that rare occasion when the head finally drops off you can rely on it doing it's job without getting in your face asking about updated ToS and changing how you have to hold the handle every few months before you smack a nail in the wall. It's the F-91w of the digital messaging world, somewhat quirky, a bit antiquated, yet provides permanence and doesn't fuck around. I also value privacy, and I can't rely on SMS for that, which is unfortunate.
"My God people, stop using AM/FM Radio! It's an analog signal, and this is a digital world! The quality and bit rate is so low! Use your phone + Spotify + Bluetooth for music! Use your phone + podcasts + Bluetooth for news, talk, and opinion, or switch to satellite radio!"
Problem: In breaking news moments like this, there should be a type of podcast you can listen to in real time, easily accessible for free.
This basically happened to me when a friend was scheduling group videogames for the week. "If X and Y had Prime then they could order a switch and have it in time for Friday with free shipping!"*
Gosh, if only there were some sort of local Amazon warehouse that I could travel to to procure the items I require when I require them. They'd probably have a lot of items stored! In fact, some of these stores of items might even cater to one or two types of items only, perhaps necessitating multiple stores at different locations!
* This was a real conversation from a human being.
I had a similar conversation with some folks regarding streaming a while ago.
Friend: Man, I can never settle on something to watch on Netflix/Hulu/Disney+, etc.... It would be nice I could pick a genre and the streaming service is just rotating through a list of popular titles of that genre - something that's just always on that anyone can tune into.
> It would be nice I could pick a genre and the streaming service is just rotating through a list of popular titles of that genre
Although I would say in this case it's not exactly analog with TV, for two main reasons: ads, and picking a genre. In general, TV channels don't stick to a specific genre, even when it's right on the name (like History Channel).
Also, I doubt your friend would actually want a live, always on thing. They might just end up upset that everything's already mid-way through, or that they can't pause. Netflix "random" feature makes more sense, and I guess even more if you could choose a genre.
edit: seems Netflix doesn't have the 'random' feature anymore
I really miss that feature of broadcast TV. I know there's some solutions for Netflix, but they're desktop only, and not built-in to their apps.
Unfortunately, the economic incentives for Netflix and similar means they'll never ever develop an app like that, because they want to discourage long-tail viewing.
I love tuning into AM 1610 when driving through National Parks to get park information. AM is great for low-power local broadcast for recorded tourist information on repeat.
If I could have a TRUE pots phone, I'd jump on it.
Instead all you can get it psuedo-POTS jammed over VoIP.
Real POTS in the old days was actually kinda magic. You never had the "everyone talking over everone else" thing you get with any VoIP solution because you don't have a syllable or two (more if using cell) of hidden latency.
Other than the audio rolling off everything above about 3.5khz, real POTS is as close as you can get to being in the same room.
The second one is such a horrible thing that I wish it was blocked by the OS. Stop giving apps access to your entire contacts!
I did not consent to those companies knowing my phone number, name, and likely other information!
But you clicked a little button that they can so its completely fine! \s
That is likely my single biggest pet peeve of the current state of tech is other people being able to consent to MY information being gobbled up just because they clicked a damn button.
Although note that with SMS, you're consenting to multiple phone companies knowing your phone number, name, and definitely other information in the form of all your messages. Possible I should have made that clearer in the original article: it doesn't make sense to me that someone would stick with SMS because they don't want Meta/Google/Apple/whoever to have their info, unless they truly believe that AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon/etc. are better stewards of our data. (And I don't mean to dunk on that latter group of companies here...I just don't have any reason to believe either group is better than the other.)
It's very confusing to me that Europe seems generally skeptical of big American tech, but has evidently jumped straight into bed with Facebook's WhatsApp with far more enthusiasm than Americans.
Maybe because most of the initial success was before Facebook bought Whatsapp. Until recently, lot of people were ignoring that their whatsapp was part of facebook (but those people were also using facebook messenger anyway).
Germany and Switzerland have some exotic secure messengers that were quite popular (and may still be) like threema.
There was also some quite suprizing stuff. My inlaws were, until recently, using Viber. They didn’t know why (none of them are computer people). It was wild to me to discover a chat app I never heard off in a circle of people completely outside of tech.
Anyway, the only longterm solution is an open standard. Propably XMPP. Or email after all (it works, look at delta chat).
Much as I would love an open standard to win here, their track record has not been great with respect to messaging. If someone (looking at you, Google) were to jump on board with one, that could change stuff.
But to be fair, most consumers aren't going to care about an open standard directly; they'll care about finding and chatting with their friends. An open standard is a great way to get there when it works, but, for example, WhatApp being a de facto standard in much of the world accomplishes the same thing in those regions.
> Maybe because most of the initial success was before Facebook bought Whatsapp.
I guess. But it doesn't really explain why it continues to be so popular, to the extent that even on forums like this (where well-grounded skepticism of big tech companies like Facebook is generally taken for granted) you have Europeans acting like Americans are backwards fools for not wanting to jump into bed with Facebook.
It is on every persons phone, it is the defacto standard.
There was a big push about two years back by many people to change application when Whatsapp's privacy policy was changing and many pushed telegram and signal. The two or three of my friends, who left and held out, have now reinstalled Whatsapp. There's simply no easy way for them to speak to everyone else. People are reluctant to text and won't bother installing another application. (BTW this was in Africa.)
While yes for many in the subsequent years, it wasn't at the time WhatsApp took over the world in 2011-2012. It didn't help for SMS when telcos were already giving unlimited social media in their plans and even prepaid, even when this already started to include unlimited SMS as well; people already migrated.
Its simplicity, cross-platform (as people out there use Android more than iOS) and user base was and still is the big moat; there have been quite superior applications over the years, yet none of them are used as the main messenger except by some niche communities. Telegram has been there since 2013, it's quite popular because of the features but I doubt it will take over: WhatsApp is enough and everyone already knows it.
It's safe to say the median app is Whatsapp. Countries like Australia still use Whatsapp. This picture you provided excludes the rest of subsaharan Africa which uses Whatsapp.
Yes, it is absolutely very popular, that's not what we're talking about here.
The problem is that given a random person off the street, how can you figure out which messenger apps you have in common? And assuming everyone outside the US uses WhatsApp like the grandparent poster I replied to did, doesn't work.
> Yeah, this feels a lot like saying "My god, people, stop using telephones! Facetime has video! And the bitrate! It's a million times higher! It's 2023, why would anyone use a POTS call?!" Sure, nicer technical specs are...nice, but they're a far, far second to solving a problem.
I understand that this is supposed to feel like a clearly ridiculous example but my gut reaction is "well yeah, I hate the telephone and I'd be quite happy if I never have to give my phone number to anyone or answer a phone call again."
It's something of a clearly ridiculous example and I'm sure a lot of people (myself included) would prefer using more modern solutions 99% of the time. However, I suspect that when you tell most people that also means their 911 calls that basically cannot fail by law now also need to work on Discord or whatever they'll at least take a minute to think about the implications.
911 calls are pretty clearly a special case that is obviously worth pointing out if someone is advocating for literally dismantling the entire telephone system without a very good proposal for replacing the 911 system. That would be a much more extreme position than simply disliking routine (especially unsolicited) telephone calls and preferring than most people in society default to another form of communication.
Signal on Android is doing just that and I love it. But they announced that they will remove that feature due to too many users thinking that an SMS sent with Signal is secure (despite an open lock displayed next to the message)
I know this is off topic, but having spent a significant amount of time convincing people around me to use signal, once they remove this feature, literally 100% of the non-tech folks I've gotten onto signal will drop it and move back to SMS. It makes me so sad.
Yes, I don't think replacing SMS with a private company/single organisation as the messaging platform provider is the solution (which is why I also count out WhatsApp also, despite currently relying on it heavily to communicate with Android users).
I think in the end we need a cross-platform messaging protocol that replaces SMS/MMS that is not reliant on a single app vendor, provides end-to-end encryption and will be supported by mobile network providers.
I can see why Google/Android's pushing for iMessage to be an open standard (they have a page dedicated to this that looks like it's written by a war propaganda writer: https://www.android.com/get-the-message/). It would be nice, but it's also good marketing for iPhones so I fail so see why Apple will play ball unless the likes of the EU implement legislation to make it happen.
Note: I'm not sure the assumption that only the US is dependent on SMS is accurate (I think that it's a standard that works globally and is currently relied on by majority of countries AFAIK).
I understand the desire to just use the default app. I feel the same for most of the stuff I use.
However, being based on standards is more like being based on the lowest common denominator. Moxie describes the issue pretty good in his post where he explains why signal is not federated (any more):
When talking about things like encryption, RCS isn't that much better, it seems. Correct me if I'm wrong, but encryption is optional for the implementors. That doesn't seem to make it secure by default.
And it's also not Google trying to push to open standards. In the past, Google made multiple attempts to get their own iMessage and did not succeed:
It feels like the campaign for RCS ist judt a PR campaign against apple.
Don't get me wrong, I think SMS is dated and I think it needs a replacement with something more modern and open that is not owned by a private company.
I fully agree the best outcome here would be a cross-platform, E2EE standard supported as the default across a variety of platforms. (Where iMessage would be a great option if Apple would play ball.) I'm just not holding my breath...and in the absence of that the best I could think to do is explain to whoever would listen why they can take action on their own behalf and that of their community.
I think the only serious RCS client at this point is Google Messages, which defaults to E2EE when possible (i.e., both clients are Google Messages). All of the major US carriers have started shipping Google Messages by default. There are other clients like Samsung Messages and whatever crap carriers have tried to implement themselves, but It seems like they'll phase out.
As far as I can tell, Google Messages defaults to E2EE when possible when RCS is enabled, but RCS is disabled by default. Which basically means 80% of users don't have it turned on.
> I think in the end we need a cross-platform messaging protocol that replaces SMS/MMS that is not reliant on a single app vendor, provides end-to-end encryption and will be supported by mobile network providers.
Except for ".. will be supported by mobile network providers.", doesn't Jabber/XMPP already fulfill all of that?
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by support by mobile network providers.
TBH I don't know the last part either. I just see it being said time and time again that I have started to assume it is true.
But I do find the idea weird that they would jump through the hoops for it unless there is a major reason for it. Like we (US) had unlimited SMS a while ago that I think also helped.
I wonder what would have to happen for iMessage to get adopted as a standard, or a similar standard to replace it. It's such a great technology, it's a tragedy that Apple has an iron grip on it.
(Original author here) I agree with everything you said. SMS is popular for excellent reasons that are hard to overcome at this point. I wrote the article not because I expect it to create a behavioral shift at scale, but for the folks who, if they knew more, might care enough to do something—who agree with me that while sticking with SMS is easier than switching, maybe the benefits of switching are great enough to justify it.
Since you're here, I really dislike the opening paragraph:
>Suppose you had two choices when chatting with your friends. The first will give you a great messaging experience, but you’ll need to sign up for a new app to get it.
The problem is, that totally misses the actual friction point. It's not just that YOU have to do this, but so would ALL of your friends. Given how salient the rest of the post is, I'm certain this was intentional, and so it turns me off as a reader immediately because you are opening with something so disingenuous.
I take your point. It wasn't intentional in terms of hiding the truth; it was intentional in terms of opening with something strong and not too nuanced. I had hoped getting into the nuance a couple paragraphs later would suffice, but given your comment I've updated the article with a hint of it up front.
And as I argue in the article, it's not essential that ALL your friends switch. Most of us deal with fragmented communication in one form or another (unfortunately). I'm probably 20% email, 40% iMessage / SMS, 30% Telegram, 10% a smattering of other things. It's not ideal but it is reality and, if nothing else, I think starting small is an effective switching strategy.
The problem I have is that no matter what, the decision to use something besides SMS/iMessage is going to be a decision to use more than one messaging app. Even if you are a great persuader and are able to get all of your friends and family to switch to your new app (which is never going to happen either), you are STILL going to need to use SMS for all sorts of things (new contacts, businesses, etc).
There's one gigantic advantage to SMS that no alternative app has come close to matching: your phone number is yours, so even if Verizon decides to drop you as a customer, you can move to one of their competitors and still be able to receive messages from everyone you could before. If you use WhatsApp and Meta decides to ban you, you're out of luck unless you gave a second means of communication to everyone you used to talk to on it.
The only other means of communication that comes close is email with your own domain, which in theory offers the same benefit but in practice is a ton of work and will often result in your messages ending up in spam folders.
Unless you move out of their service area. Or a number of other caveats. Then they're not required to allow you to port your number, and telecoms rarely do anything user-friendly-but-internally-costly that they're not legally required to do.
> Then they're not required to allow you to port your number, and telecoms rarely do anything user-friendly-but-internally-costly that they're not legally required to do.
They're not required to do it, and they rarely let you do anything that isn't legally required?
Something doesn't add up here, because telecoms letting you port your mobile number to another provider is the status quo. I can't remember the last I heard somebody complain that they weren't able to port their number when changing providers. I've done it four times myself, and each time it was painless.
When he said "unless you move out of their service area" he should have said "unless you move to a different geographic area".
Here is a summary of the rules [1] in the US. Key points from that page:
• If you're switching service providers and remaining in the same geographic area, you can keep your existing phone number. This process – often referred to as phone number porting – can be done between wireline, IP and wireless providers.
• If you are moving to a new geographic area, you may not be able to keep your current phone number when changing providers.
• Also, some rural wireline service providers may obtain waivers for the porting requirement from state authorities. Their customers may be unable to port their number to a new provider. If you are unable to port your number for that reason, contact your state public utilities commission for further information.
Where "geographic area" can mean "moved a block, no longer technically in the same municipal area", yes.
I'll give you one guess why I know this.
Yes, most cases port just fine. I've ported multiple times successfully too. But no, your number is not "yours". It's the telecom's, and they decide if you can keep it or not... and they have a history of choosing so poorly that they are now legally required to make a better choice most of the time. It really does not imply good things about trust in their future behavior.
Meta, Google, etc. also sometimes randomly ban accounts for reasons unknown (AI detecting "suspicious" behavior, etc.), whereas I have never heard of phone companies doing this.
Follow the money. What an attention-funded company calls "suspicious" behavior is what the phone company calls "revenue-generating" behavior. That's why my carrier seems to be utterly unable to stop spam callers (who generate revenue for them), whereas it's been nearly 20 years since I've had an email spam problem, thanks to Gmail and the businesses that pay Google to support it.
The owner of Kiwi farms also had his personal phone number terminated despite presumably not engaging in any illegal behaviour on it. I don’t believe you can do a number transfer when you get banned either.
Skimming through the links I see only one or two instances of a WhatsApp account being banned. I ask because while I come across talk of FB accounts being suspended/banned, I couldn't recall any WA bans other than perhaps egregious warranted examples.
Not saying anything of the sort. My initial question was centered on the idea of WA accounts being banned, something at least I did not recall encountering, while I did come across talk of FB accounts being banned, hence my query. I'm not making a judgement call on way or the other, whether they were just or not. Looks like WA accounts do get banned, just nowhere as frequently as FB accounts.
I was randomly banned from Telegram once for a month. My meta account also strangely got banned from advertising yesterday despite me hardly ever using the account and never having advertised before.
Yeah, sure, SMS sucks. But this article is missing the forest for the trees. In fact it writes off the trees entirely:
> Switching platforms is a pain, and getting your friends to do it is even harder. I think the advantages are worth the pain in this case, but the pain is real. So make it easier and start small: find one friend who’s willing to experiment. Sign up together for Signal or Telegram, and take it for a spin. And go from there.
This is THE problem. The pros, cons and analysis of every alternative messaging service is fine but the simple fact remains that the vast majority of people will not switch because they have no problem with their current setup. The article takes the benefits of privacy and security as a given (and for an HN audience I think it's appropriate to) but experience shows that most people don't care. Getting them to care is the key here.
> The pros, cons and analysis of every alternative messaging service is fine but the simple fact remains that the vast majority of people will not switch because they have no problem with their current setup.
Hopefully people become more sensitive to privacy issues and will realize how bad SMS is in this regard. RCS doesn't seem to have standard way to e2ee messages either so I don't see that helping either.
Yep. As you say, the vast majority of people have no problem with SMS. I wrote the article in the hopes of convincing at least a few more people to have a problem with it.
They did mention Matrix - which seems to be the best and most obvious choice, if you're trying to optimize for open-source, e2ee, run-on-any-device, not-tied-to-phone, and other features.
Going for worse tech solutions will just make the discussion for which app to download for your friend group slightly shorter.
Listen, SMS sucks (and by extension MMS which is what manages the media sending) but universality trumps all. It's a simple system that despite all its flaws is still available everywhere and used for everything. It's an "innate" technology. Being innate is a feature far more powerful that stickers and read receipts.
RCS is a great standard to replace it but SMS is so ingrained that it wouldn't be gone even with RCS on every phone and every operator interconnected.
The best parts of the internet are due to standardized , open protocols: RFCs, HTML, SMTP and so on. It is the neccessary foundation without there would be no internet.
> people you don’t know, at multiple companies can read all of your messages, without any hacking or special technology. Your chats are there to read, maybe even by accident, like a postcard passing through a post office.
As opposed to Facebook seeing my messages and selling data? What am I not understanding here?
You can’t have privacy and still communicate through any form of instant messaging. Don’t tell me about some oss platform that no one uses.
I text because I don’t like social networking sites. If my message fails to send, I get an error. I don't get to send gifs, high quality photos, or see when people are typing back but that's a small price.
This is silly, most people have never even heard of Signal or Telegram, and only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp. I could either immediately message anyone over fast and reliable SMS, but I should instead ask them to install some app first?
Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. If the other person happens to have an iPhone (as most of my contacts do), they automatically get all these modern features, and if they don't, it seamlessly fails over to SMS and just works without anybody needing to think about it.
It would have been so easy for Apple to just be cool and follow some open standards rather than building their own proprietary network to drive a wedge in global messaging networks.
It seems to me that the only reason SMS is still a thing is Apple pushing iMessage on everyone, and SMS is the only way anyone can talk to someone using iMessage without buying into Apple's silly closed ecosystem.
I have Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and even Messages with RCS etc on my phone, and the only people I ever talk to over SMS are iPhone users. Even worse, Apple does everything they can to make communications between iPhone and Android users look like shit to drive in some sense of superiority and pressure iPhone users to stay on the platform.
In many countries, EVERYONE has WhatsApp. In Israel it's how your boss, your work team, your kid's daycare, businesses and government offices communicate with you.
This happened well before Facebook bought them. The solution should have been to not allow the most popular instant messaging platform in the world be bought by a company whose revenue is based on spying on their customers. Unfortunately, the US has had functionally no antitrust action in the past several decades, and what little it has now only exists based on political affiliation.
Which is awesome from a purely technical perspective. The downside is it means your country's communications infrastructure is owned and controlled by Facebook.
If an open protocol version of WhatsApp existed and was universally supported by the default messaging apps on iOS and Android, I'd be all over that.
> Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great.
That hasn't been my experience. Often it does. And then sometimes it doesn't. My sense is that when it doesn't, it's because of the interdependence on SMS.
Here in France very few people use SMS to talk with friends.
They are now mostly just used by companies to send short notifications (like if you drop your car off at a repair place they'll send you a SMS when its ready to pick up). It's good enough for quick one offs like that and not much else.
Most people use whatsapp and some signal or telegram.
The US seems to be pretty backwards on technology. Chip based payment cards have been universal here since the 90s (maybe even before) while the US was still on magstripe for decades.
People would stop texting if there were a common protocol for messaging not on SMS.
I'm sure they exist, but until WhatsApp can communicate with WeChat etc, texting is unlikely to go away. This is one of the few areas where government mandated bridges may be required to allow for interoperability.
It still boggles my mind that here we are in 2023, and we still don't have a way to universally and interoperably.... "send text over the Internet to someone in real time". This should be dead simple. Yet, every chat app is still incompatible with every other chat app, and no company evidently sees any value in fixing this. And, whenever a new chat app emerges, lo and behold, it's also incompatible with every other chat app. This incompatibility is obviously a deliberate choice companies are making, not an insurmountable technical challenge.
We were nearly there 20ish years ago. Then everything turned into a walled garden. We've somehow regressed in significant ways since the 90s and early 2000s.
My library sends me a SMS when my books are due. My doctor sends me a SMS to remind me of the appointment. My bank sends me a SMS to tell me that they have sent me mail in the banking app. The delivery man sends me a SMS to tell that my stuff is on the way...
They all do this because they know that SMS just works for (almost) anyone who has a phone number. SMS will not die until all those big systems can trust that the new alternative can reach most of their audience.
I think SMS works for those use cases as a one way notification, and no further interaction is usually needed.
Here in the US my doctor's office sends me an automated reminder SMS before appointments, and the functionality is limited to replying yes or no to confirm. For the use case it has, it works fine.
WhatsApp is the most common worldwide, but not the most common in every country. That could be Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or even something like LINE. (Yes, Messenger and WhatsApp are nearly the same thing these days.) If you have friends from different places you end up with most of the messaging apps installed on your phone.
Came here to post the same. 90% of my messaging is WhatsApp, 10% Telegram. The only thing I use SMS for is 2FA and even that is dying out in favour of push notifications.
Haven't used SMS in 10 years. I had to send a SMS to opt out of one of my carrier's options and I had to do the whole setup for Adnroid's Messages app because I have never opened it.
The question the article proposes we ask ourself: "Am I fine with a bunch of people I don’t know, all of whom have my phone number and some of whom know where I live, reading all of this?"
Lots of people have in their mind something akin to a medical professional who can see their most intimate details and expect them to treat them with respect. They assume anyone with access to this will act professionally because they assume that is their job, and so the answer to that question is often "Yes".
It is clear to me personally that is not reality, but I'm not sure how to influence peoples perspective here.
I don't care if SMS goes away for good, but whatever replaces it should be a different universal standard that can/will be implemented by carriers. I'm not going to purchase a smartphone just so that I can use a fancy messaging app when my current phone already has sufficient messaging abilities.
Further, if SMS is completely turned down (and not replaced) so that there is no text messaging service for non-smartphone devices then I'd rather be without messaging capabilities than have to get a smartphone.
I think it's backwards: Android users are (seen to be, in certain circles) inferior and the green bubbles expose your Android ownership. And SMS (as indicated by the green bubble) is inferior to iMessage.
These days both iOS and Android feel pretty whatever but back in the day the iPhone had a level of cultural cache Android didn't. Instagram was iPhone only and there was a huge uproar when it became available on Android because it was losing its cool.
It's counter-factual fantasy. The color of the chat bubbles are blue when your messages are sent using E2E-secure full-featured iMessage, and green otherwise. It's your chat bubbles, by the way; messages you receive are always gray, regardless of how they were sent to you.
>The narrative: Apple uses the green bubbles as a PR tactic to make Android users seem inferior.
>I can’t say Apple doesn’t enjoy that dynamic. But by now, you know there’s a lot more to the green vs. blue bubbles than perception. The difference in color represents a very real difference in functionality, technology, and privacy
Like you (and the author) said it's the Blue "E2E-secure full-featured iMessage" versus the Green less-featured, less-reliable SMS, and the ONLY way into the "important signal" of Blue is for your conversational partner to buy a (more expensive) iPhone. It's wrong and reductive to pretend that it's "just" a PR tactic, but in the same vein we don't have to pretend that security and user experience is the only benefit Apple gets from this.
This is all well and good, but for me, it's not SMS. No one uses SMS. It's iMessage. And iMessage is absolutely more secure than Telegram, and probably even Whatsapp, so all these arguments fall flat for me.
Personally, I hate iMessage because, while I have an iPhone, everything else is Linux. But that's not really an argument I can make to literally every single person I ever interact with. :/
iMessage is indeed more secure than Telegram. Dunno vs. WhatsApp, but unlike WhatsApp it has a central message archive (and as of a few weeks ago, you can end-to-end encrypt that, too, I think).
It pained me not to be able to recommend iMessage but because it's not supported on Android, Windows, or Linux, you fall back to SMS (for Android) or nothing at all (for Linux/Windows) and then it's far worse than Telegram.
I still find the privacy argument incredibly vacuous in the context of direct messaging, same as with email. The issue isn't some NSA guy being thwarted by your encryption, it's the people you talk to either intentionally or accidentally leaking the content of your messages.
For the average person the thoughtless forwarder or copyer of messages is a much bigger threat than any shadowy entity so I find these recommendations of trading convenience for 'security' very wrong.
>"Your chats are there to read, maybe even by accident, like a postcard passing through a post office."
in my opinion this is actually the only sane default assumption for any casual direct message or email format and the way security is framed is priming people for the wrong threat. The Verizon SMS guy is literally less likely to screw you over than whoever you're texting. Modern day's Stranger Danger.
There are two things that keep my wife and me tethered to Google Chat as our primary means of texting each other:
1) Search. This is the big one. The fact that I don't even need to differentiate between email and chat when I need to search for something is highly valuable. Plus, its search functionality is just in general very solid. Go figure.
2) Integration into GMail. During the workday, it's more convenient for me to text from my laptop than from my phone. During the evenings, it's often the reverse. The fact that I can easily have a conversation going in my browser, then easily transition the conversation to my phone, is quite useful.
That said, I would love to be convinced that some of the alternatives mentioned in the article can either match or make up for these key features.
I went all in on Google Hangouts back around 2010, and made everyone close to me switch. Ten years and ten Google messaging apps later, when Hangouts sunset "officially for real", I let my contacts choose what protocol we used. I mostly just use Discord now (with some Signal for techie friends).
Google was perfectly poised to be at least the second biggest player in the messaging space, and they squandered their lead over and over.
I refuse to trust Google to sustain a product that isn't their core focus again unless they make some major changes how they treat the product lifecycle.
>Search.
...broke when they switched, by the way, so now you need to manually search in a different place for any older message.
to be fair, Google+ really messed them up here. Everything went to crap after Plus was attempted. I say this because Hangouts got swallowed by and subsequently neutered after Plus.
I didn't talk much about Google Chat in the article, but I think it's a fine example of a non-E2EE messenger in the same bucket as Telegram, from a company that tends to demonstrate a better-than-average respect for user data (with the disclosure that I worked there at one point).
If you're using it and liking it, I personally wouldn't recommend switching. I didn't recommend it because at this point I don't trust Google to continue investing in it given multiple incarnations of Hangouts, prior Chat products, Allo, etc.
On the flipside, SMS is known to work even when the cell system as a whole is degraded because of call volume. In a disaster situation, when residential power is out and internet connections are unavailable, sending an SMS text can sometimes be the only way to get a message.
I value my privacy too much to stop texting. This person demands I subject myself to the whims of some corporate software stack in order to achieve privacy, and I reject the thesis. I don't send private information via SMS and I don't use it for two-factor authentication. Despite all the whining about 'the network effect' and 'user friendliness' I've never had trouble arranging encrypted comms both in my personal and work lives.
I still remember the day when it dawned on me that everyone, like even cool people, could get SMS messages. It was that tipping point when enough people had phones 24/7 and suddenly it wasn't a very nerdy thing to do. Pre this time, the idea of sending an email to ask someone out for a date for example was just laughable. But a txt? It was very different. Still to this day if you meet someone new and get "their number" it's the way.
In the UK I remember the first time a friend had one which was in 1994 when I was 17. A year later I went to university and in 1995/6 almost nobody there had a mobile phone, the year after maybe 20% of students had them, and by my final year (97/98) almost everyone had one - so in the UK I'd say the tipping point was probably 1997, possibly triggered by affording pre-pay mobile phones becoming available in major stores and supermarkets.
Just checked Wikipedia, seems that's right:
> The concept was further developed by Vodafone UK, who in Oct 1997 launched 'Pay as you Talk', packaging a GSM phone with a prepay tariff, and retailing it in new kinds of mass merchandiser retailers such as Woolworths and Argos and one year later into supermarkets such as Tesco (previously mobile phones had only been sold in specialist phone retailers). Customers could buy the product outright for £149 (reducing to £99 very shortly afterwards) which came with credit and then top up as they needed. Pay as you Talk went on to be the market leading prepay proposition in the UK for many years attracting millions of new mobile customers.
I was a holdout for another year or so, right up until I started trying to meet up with people in the centre of London at the busiest times of the weekend lol.
I was in 8th grade when the first iPhone was released, and I'd say most people got a smart phone while I was in college. I myself got one in 2012, a nexus 4. But I think for SMS, the point at which "most kids have a cell with unlimited texting" happened was probably at least around the 2010s. I was late to the trend (poorer family) and got an LG Vu in, oh... say 2009. And I think pretty much all of my friends already had phones with suitable texting plans.
But mind you this is high school kids, I have no idea about adult adoption.
Wasn't texting still super expensive up until the late 2000s? Imo texting didn't really assume it's recognizable quintessential form until you could send a text that was just "lol" and not be lambasted by your parents or spouse when the phone bill came.
I remember getting a reasonable amount included in my 1999 plan. I remember 1997 as the year my brother called and asked "is it safe to put a credit card number on this site called amazon?" and 1998 and the first year I got a cell phone myself, but 99 as the txt year.
What people who don't like SMS miss the most in these discussions is that cellular signals still have holes. I get great coverage at home. 1 Mile away, near the kids' school is a dead zone. Literally the only thing I can get out is an SMS message because it doesn't use data (it uses the control channel).
No app can compete with that.
However, I must say that in full coverage areas, Signal is my goto.
It's time to stop using that one actual protocol that every phone has native support for, don't need ANYTHING but you having a phone subscription and is not a walled garden or in the hands of a single organization? Yes that sounds totally reasonable, given the many excellent alternatives. </sarcasm></b></<u></i>
The alleged advantages don't add up much in my book. For the ones that even exist. Who is confused by SMS?
Having to install a new app is more of an inconvenience than all the drawbacks of SMS put together. (It's not just installing. You have to have an account, and track your credentials, and get new contact info, etc)
When everything else hits the fan, SMS still ends up somewhat working. Might not be enough bandwidth for a call or application - but in an emergency, the best chance for getting a message out on a crappy network is still texting. Might take a bit of tries, but it will be the first to work.
My primary issue with SMS is that I do not own a phone that ever has a SIM card installed, and I cannot use SMS (reliably, regularly, repeatedly) from my computers. I don't want to use a messaging protocol that is tied to the transport layer(s).
Great write up, and I agree with most of the article, in particular regarding SMS shortcomings, Signal and WhatsApp, but I’m not sure why I should trust Telegram *more* than mobile networks operators when messages are not E2E encrypted.
To clarify: I'm not suggesting you trust Telegram more than mobile providers--if SMS were encrypted in transit I'd have a much weaker case against it. But the point is, with Telegram you're placing trust in Telegram. With SMS you're placing trust in your mobile provider, AND your friends' mobile providers, AND an unknown collection of other entities. At a minimum, that's a lot more points of weakness, even if each individual one is equally trustworthy.
Stop using SMS? Pssh. Lots of stuff still relies on POCSAG paging, which has not been entirely replaced by SMS for much the same reason that SMS will never be entirely replaced by third-party apps.
SMS is not for fotos and videos. For that you have MMS. And security ? Facebook can read my WhatsApp messages, Google reads everything on my phone so ... industry state of the art.
One advantage of SMS no one else has mentioned. It doesn't suck battery like running Whatsapp and Telegram and Signal and Messenger and Element like I am right now.
If the choice is between a secure centralized app run by a nonprofit foundation (Signal) and an insecure, open protocol (SMS), the answer is quite obviously clear for 99% of people.
yeah but the solution isn't ivory towers owning our communications or having to choose a bunch of apps either. i'd prefer some kind of an industry standard that is cross-platform and works with built-in messaging clients
something like rcs, but without the drama
i know for sure that i can sms nearly anyone. can't say that about signal (which i have tried, and it is nice)
email still rules! In every way described in the article.
The fact that socially, one is "laughable" is really a laugh at the tech illiterate.
A good email client and server, offering instantaneous message transfer and notification is infinitely more secure and functional than any "messaging" "app". A tech savvy person can easily run their own mail server, or migrate their history from one vendor to another. Try that with your signal history...
Of course, it's just not socially acceptable to admit the boomers were right on this one...
"No privacy whatsoever" is a bit of an stretch of an argument to make, specially when talking to the general public. You have way more privacy when sending a plain text SMS or an email than when sending a physical letter with a wax seal, and most people would argue that the latter is "private" for some definition of the word.
I would even bet that any email leaks that most users would be afraid of are going to be caused by, in this order:
A) The intended email recipient leaking it
B) The email recipient/sender storing a copy of the email at rest (likely unencrypted, even if it was sent encrypted in transit).
C) An official email archiving policy from either the recipient or the sender's organization
And only at at the very bottom of the list "one of the intermediate mail relays being compromised and leaking the email in transit".
The thing with email is it's only encrypted (even in transit) sometimes. So it kinda has the same issue as iMessage. If you're a Gmail user using Gmail's web app to email another Gmail user, you get encryption in transit (and it sounds like you might be able to implement E2EE as well). But if you email dave@somerandomemailserver.com, you won't know until you send the message whether it's encrypted.
As for envelopes and wax seals--it's an interesting question. It requires a lot less technical knowledge for someone to open that envelope than to spy on messaging traffic. On the other hand, a lot more people have access to the messaging traffic and can bring scripts to bear on it at scale.
good news! the delta chat application is available for PC, Mac, Android, iphone and gives you signal-style clients but powered by (encrypted if you want) email messages.
It's time to stop using medium for your blogging. I won't sign up for an account to read stuff - the world already has too many accounts.
I get that the author doesn't want to use SMS. I mostly use signal, but I sometimes use SMS to communicate with people who prefer it. I won't use whatsapp or telegram, for no particular reason other than I don't have to. Some of my friends contact me via twitter messaging - that's even worse in my opinion.
SMS needs to stay. It works without functional data unless some carrier really screws the pooch. I’ve had to revert to it numerous times at random especially in BFE to get in contact with a client or my wife etc. no data? But signal? SMS.
Otherwise anyone I wanna chat with I have on Telegram. Heh
Suppose you had two choices when chatting with your friends. The first will give you a great messaging experience, but you’ll need to sign up for a new app. The second requires no sign-up, but sometimes fails to deliver messages; sends tiny, blurry photos and videos; only works on your phone; confuses all your friends; and offers no privacy whatsoever.
That choice is real. And if you’re like most people in the US (and millions of others worldwide), you choose that second option every day by using SMS.
At least here in Europe they've been relegated to automatic communications, like receiving 2-factor codes. No one uses them for messaging. I think the app of choice is different per country, but I haven't met any non American that's still used to SMS.
That's simply untrue. Tens or hundreds of millions of people in Europe still use SMS, for messaging.
If you're trying to say X% of people under the age of Y tend to use WhatsApp(iMessage/IG/SC/Telegram/Signal) for messaging, then what are X and Y? and in which European countries (it varies).
At least in my country (Spain), it is not at all age related. No one uses sms for communication. I just checked a local source and Whatsapp usage is 97% among the young lowering to 87% among the 70+ group, with the practical totality of the others choosing just calls or no phone usage.
If you know a European country where SMS are the norm, can you share which one? As I said, I don't know a single one, but they might exist.
Pretty much anyone communicating across platforms, iPhone to Android or the other way, is using SMS. As you say, it varies from country to country, but also from social circles.
Because SMS has been basically free for 20 years in some market, it's not something people felt a need to migrate away from.
To be fair, when I said "millions of others worldwide" I was making a (pretty safe) assumption. As the default messaging service on every phone, and with literally billions of phones out there, it seems pretty likely that in the entire non-US world there are millions of people using it.
> Suppose you had two choices when chatting with your friends. The first will give you a great messaging experience, but you’ll need to sign up for a new app.
Make that several new apps, all of which are completely separate from each other with no integration. That's why people choose option 2.
..and other things that, to be fair, I didn't fully spell out in the article. I suppose I could have said "periodically confuses your friends" because a lot of it has to do with switching phones, switching numbers, having more than one number, etc.—-things that aren't everyday affairs but also aren't that uncommon.
It is just... there. It does what I need it to do without standing in my way of communicating. It is also a standard that is not at the whim of a specific company shutting down a major service (that I am aware of) to continue communicating.
I struggled for a while after my mom got an iPhone for her to understand the App Store. I feel like she may not fully be there but is using an iPad now solely instead of a computer so its close...ish.
Maybe this is because I do use an iPhone and most people I communicate with are using iMessage that I just don't see the other issues mentioned here. But because I use iMessage, if for some reason apple were to shut down that service... I would just revert back to using SMS and communication will mostly just continue.
Finally... If I want to start talking to a new friend I meet at the bar. I just give them my number, no conversation about which app they use or OS ever needs to happen.
Edit: I know countries outside of the US are less dependent on SMS/iMessage. But it just feels like jumping through extra hoops for something that is built in.