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Kethal , (edited )

SMS is truly open and isn’t overseen by any central authority. Although obviously your carrier needs to support it, you aren’t forced to choose from among a few SMS providers. As I understand, RCS is a partially proprietary protocol under the guise of an open standard. As I understand, your carrier doesn’t handle RCS. Instead it’s routed through an RCS provider, and that provider is currently an extension of Google.

To me it seems like RCS is just Google’s attempt to take over text messaging, and even though SMS has some serious flaws, I feel like a corporate controlled system is even worse.

Am I wrong about RCS? Is it really an open standard? When I search for details, it’s mostly about how SMS is bad with pictures and thus RCS is great, but nothing about how RCS makes its way from one phone to another.

fraydabson ,

From what I have read regarding RCS it seems you are not wrong. I also read the tech it’s based on is ancient.

SharkyPants ,

Hummm, Google must have metrics directly associated with people moving to Apple because of this issue to put resources on it.

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Steve Jobs in his announcement of FaceTime back in 2010 said it was gonna be open-source. That never happened.

They wanted it to work with a peer to peer protocol, but then got sued by a company I can’t remember, so they instead relied on relay servers.

Sure, you could use FaceTime on Android and Windows (and I guess Linux and FreeBSD), but you have to visit a specific website and have an invite link from someone who has an Apple device. Not very open-source if you ask me.

Walled gardens make money, and add frustration.

dandu3 ,

FaceTime on other platforms is like a year or 2 old feature.

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I know. It’s actually two years old.

redcalcium ,

When will Google opensourcing their RCS implementation? This would enable RCS support on third party ROMs built from AOSP. Those 3rd party ROMs developers don’t have resource to built their own RCS messaging app, which means you can’t fully degoogled your phone if you want RCS support.

deweydecibel ,

No, for real, why are these posts filled with comments from people acting like Apple needs to be defended on this? It hurts absolutely no one except Apples stock holders and makes a better messaging environment for everyone.

So why the hell are you playing defense for a 2 trillion dollar company when all they’re being asked to do is not fuck over other phone users?

saddlebag ,

Because its cool to hate Google on Lemmy

OneLemmyMan ,

seeing people get all upset and bothered and acting like white knights for corporations that would instantly f them over first chance they get to make a buck was always a boost to my confidence, no matter what happens at least i will never be that stupid.

Viper_NZ , (edited )

While I don’t feel the need to defend Apple, I do feel the need to shit on Google for their motivations.

It’s not altruism that’s causing them to do this, it’s their own shitty decision making which left them uncompetitive.

Their list of messaging/communication apps competing with FaceTime/iMessage is maddening. Have I missed any?

Google Talk

Hangouts

Google Chat

Google Meet

(Android) Messages

Allo

Duo

trash80 ,

People think politics is a team sport, and that is bleeding over into other areas of life.

xts ,

If the alternative is trusting Google I’d rather stick with SMS. Implementing their closed source version of RCS would be a mistake. I’d half expect them to inject ads into the messages

slurpeesoforion ,

The invisible hand of the free market just came a little.

DerisionConsulting ,

Isn’t government intervention the opposite of the “free market?”

slurpeesoforion ,

Yes. But exploitation of rules is the essence of capitalism.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

“Through iMessage, business users are only able to send enriched messages to iOS users and must rely on traditional SMS for all the other end users,”

I don’t see how that’s weird at all? I can send “enriched messages” to other Discord users, but I can’t do that from Discord to Matrix. Or from Discord to SMS. I can’t text my friend’s Instagram either. I don’t dare say whether or not I can mail a post onto the fediverse because that definitely sounds like some niche functionality someone has implemented (or thought to implement) somewhere.

Doesn’t Google have that exact same thing anyway?

What a weird thing to take issue with. Like yeah I’d obviously prefer it if there was a widely adopted open standard that everyone could use, but that’s not how capitalism works, is it?

nao ,

but that’s not how capitalism works, is it?

That’s why regulation exists.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Oh I’d love for our governments to get their collective hands out of their arseholes and actually start regulating.

nao ,

Wouldn’t it be nice

huginn ,

I think it’s weird because:

Your iMessage and FaceTime conversations are encrypted end-to-end, so they can’t be read while they’re sent between devices.

Source

Is completely bullshit. It’s not secure, they can be read because iMessage is the way you send texts to Android as well as iOS, and apples absolute refusal to budge or to adopt other standards means that regulation is the only way to modernize a 30 year old protocol.

KairuByte ,

This is not accurate. iMessages are only sent between Apple devices, you cannot send an iMessage to android, or any other non-Apple device.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

I think they’re getting away with it because of the phrasing.

Messages sent through the iMessage service are encrypted, but not all messages you sent through the Messages (note the lack of i) app are iMessage messages. It’s the exact type of fucking sneaky bullshit that should be regulated so hard it stops existing, but I guess our regulators don’t think it’s a big deal right now.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b4a5271b-b6dd-4b01-b762-3547ca402b34.jpeg

@edinbruh mentions in another comment that

A recent … EU law mandates that if your platform is big enough … to gatekeep users from using other platforms, then it must interoperate with competing services.

And I think this is how Apple would “sneak” through this as well. The Messages app doesn’t lock you into a communications protocol. If the recipient has iMessages, it sends via that, if not, it sends via SMS/MMS. No idea if that argument would hold, I hope it wouldn’t. I would honestly prefer it if there was just a single open messaging standard that anyone could hook into, because closed proprietary tech is fucking bullshit on every single level.

AA5B ,

As someone who occasionally meets people with Android phones, yes, I’d like to see “chartreuse bubbles” for RCS in Messages

Then again, I was a huge fan of Pidgin back in the days, with its goal to speak every texting protocol

edinbruh ,

That’s weird because it’s against the law.

A recent (few months ago) EU law mandates that if your platform is big enough (in the EU market) to gatekeep users from using other platforms, then it must interoperate with competing services. That means you should thrive because you make a better product, and not because it has more users.

The fine is a considerable percentage of the company’s earnings, that supposedly even the likes of Amazon and Google cannot overlook.

This includes Whatsapp that in a few months will have to be interoperable with competing services like telegram. This requires a protocol, the IETF is working on that. Google probably wishes to use RCS, but Matrix is also working with the IETF.

Apple says iMessage is not that widespread in the EU and should not be included, Google says it is and should be regulated, that’s because this regulation will most likely have effects even outside the EU.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Apple says iMessage is not that widespread in the EU and should not be included, Google says it is and should be regulated, that’s because this regulation will most likely have effects even outside the EU.

I’m not surprised they’d say that, even though it’s a bald-faced lie. iMessages isn’t an opt-in service, you can’t even opt-out of it; it’s fully automatic. If your text recipient has an iPhone and can use iMessages, it’s sent via that. There seems to be a way to opt-out of this in settings. though I’ve not tried it myself.

EmpathicVagrant ,

You say iMessage isn’t an opt-out service, then immediately state the setting option that allows users to opt out. Yes, if you toggle off iMessage you will send via SMS instead and won’t be sending through iMessage at all.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Ha, what a blooper. What I meant was that you’re never presented with an option to send via text rather than iMessage, but have to dig through the settings app to change it.

EmpathicVagrant ,

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Though all my experience with an active apple device, there’s a default to send a failed iMessage as an SMS so it’s essentially covered. iMessage just allows like-devices to communicate via internet connection rather than phone towers.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Ah that’s probably the case here too. I just don’t text people, or use iMessage very much.

cheese_greater ,

Why not Signal protocol?

bamboo ,

Google uses Signal protocol to handle E2E for RCS communication: arstechnica.com/…/google-enables-end-to-end-encry…

The way I understand RCS (and that someone will correct me) is that it’s similar to the OSI network stack. RCS is like the lower transport or network layer for routing messages between providers, so when you send a text on AT&T it can be delivered to a Verizon phone via RCS as opposed to SMS. Within the messages, the data can be encrypted using the Signal protocol to do the key exchange and whatnot necessary for the communication.

When you’re sending an iMessage to someone, it’s not going through the cell provider and instead using the data connection to send the message to Apple who delivers the message. When iMessage falls back to SMS, that is going through the cell carrier, and had technical limitations RCS tries to resolve, including not being encrypted. Realistically, having this fallback not be over SMS but via RCS is the only option, since apple will never get rid of iMessage. Short of legislation, once Verizon or AT&T announces they’re going to stop supporting SMS, that’ll be when Apple takes RCS seriously, because there will be no other option.

cheese_greater ,

Why don’t we just skip the additional middleman and fo straight through Signal

bassomitron ,

I truly wish carriers would ditch SMS/MMS already.

sunbeam60 ,

Me too. They should move to a new system, we could call it Rich Communication Standard (RCS) or something.

Rocha ,

Google uses Signal protocol to handle E2E for RCS communication:

Google SAYS they use the Signal protocol.

Without open-source applications, you have to trust these companies to do the right thing when they can track you and make money from it in every single step of the way. Same goes for Meta with Whatsapp.

SomethingBurger ,

Isn’t this trivial to check by decrypting network traffic sent from a device? Security researchers probably already tried to find any flaw they could.

bamboo ,

And to add to this, Google published a technical overview for signal implementation in RCS: www.gstatic.com/messages/…/messages_e2ee.pdf

Fetus ,

Knowing Apple, the other option will be to not allow users to message people who don’t have an iPhone.

sarmale ,

Signal protocol only encrypts things, it doesent deliver them

cheese_greater ,

I don’t have a problem with the delivery companies delivering encrypted text. Its when they insist on participating in the “decryption process” that one has to put their foot down.

will_a113 ,

Irony meters everywhere explode

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

So that was the pop noise that woke me!

d3Xt3r ,

They should open up RCS first before making demands of Apple.

call_me_xale ,

RCS is an open standard, isn’t it? Are you referring to the E2E encryption that Google added to Android?

Venetas ,

Googles implementation of RCS, the one they are pushing as standard, is indeed proprietary

Kbobabob ,

You got a source for that?

Drunemeton ,
@Drunemeton@lemmy.world avatar

en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Rich_Communication_Services

So any RCS w/ Encryption that you see is referring to Google’s implementation that only runs on Google servers.

Kbobabob ,

So their implementation is RCS standards with an added encryption layer. What’s the issue?

Drunemeton ,
@Drunemeton@lemmy.world avatar

I have no dog in this race.

That being said, I guess it’s that it belongs to Google, is therefore propriety, and they have a less than stellar record with honoring privacy and/or keeping projects going.

Add on that telecoms didn’t want RCS to have encryption, which is why the default standard doesn’t have it, and you have a clusterfuck of privacy concerns, longevity concerns, and licensing concerns.

Then there’s the abuse factor: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23150243/google-rcs-ads-india-spam-verified-business

Kbobabob ,

So, then the argument here is to just use standard RCS without encryption?

bassomitron ,

Eh? GSMA created RCS and Google simply setup their own servers to run it. So I guess you could argue that Google’s RCS network is proprietary, but RCS itself is most definitely not. There’s technical documentation freely available for implementing your own RCS client/server, if you care to do so.

ilickfrogs ,
@ilickfrogs@lemmy.world avatar

Well didn’t they initially want carriers implementing RCS with interoperability between each other to sunset sms? But that didn’t quite pan out. IIRC there was a time when Verizon had a limited number of devices that supported RCS but only on their network, similar story with Bell in Canada. Hell at one point even Samsung had RCS but only with other Samsung phones. Fragmentation was rampant so Google took matters into their own hands. Not saying I’m happy Googles at the helm but they didn’t start out with that intention.

AA5B ,

Yeah it’s unfortunate we weren’t able to get RCS everywhere, as an improvement over sms. I imagine the encryption to be a sticking point preventing ubiquity

sarmale ,

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/b18dd561-ce67-49b6-b6ce-baa3b521259c.webp

deweydecibel ,

Apple users have no issues receiving my images.

They can’t send me anything.

Apple is the one that needs to cut the shit first.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The letter arrives as the European Commission investigates whether iMessage meets the requirements to be regulated under the bloc’s strict DMA rules.

Google has been very vocal about its desire for Apple to adopt RCS, the cross-platform messaging standard pitched as the successor to SMS, with its campaign.

“Apple’s iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy,” Google senior vice-president Hiroshi Lockheimer posted on X, then known as Twitter, last year.

The letter, which the FT notes was signed by an unnamed Google senior vice-president along with the CEOs of Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, and Orange, argues that iMessage meets the threshold for being a core platform service under the Digital Markets Act.

The company pointed The Financial Times towards a statement that says “consumers today have access to a wide variety of messaging apps, and often use many at once, which reflects how easy it is to switch between them.”

According to the Commission, Apple has previously argued that iMessage isn’t popular enough in the EU to warrant being designated as a core platform service, and that it lacks support for business-focused features like APIs.

The original article contains 528 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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