[tamirzb]

> On the other hand, I think the long-term sequalae of the blue-green message is to push people to use stand-alone apps like WhatsApp and FB Messenger

I find it amusing that in 2024 people in the US still talk about WhatsApp as a future step. Where I'm from already 10+ years ago every single person you know would have a WhatsApp account.

With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.

[Andrex]

I hope WhatsApp is the past and RCS is the future.

Insane to me the amount of WhatsApp evangelism I read on this site. Sure, let's trade international protocols for Zuckerware. What could go wrong?

SMS/RCS are flawed but can be improved. Advocating instead for Meta-produced software is irresponsible and reckless IMO.

[purpleidea]

> RCS is the future

It's really not. It's a step up from SMS, but the real future is true end-to-end encrypted communications. Signal is the next step up, and then hopefully we'll eventually get really secure messaging where the core OS doesn't help leak out your information.

[joshstrange]

RCS is trash. No E2E by default should make mentioning it on a site like HN an instant dismissal. Secondly it's effectively owned by Google (or as good as) and it relies on the carriers (the same people who brought us SMS). Why people want to run headfirst into the arms of carrier+Google is beyond me, especially for a "standard" that is anything but and will undoubtedly wither on the vine. Carriers will not make any improvements (see SMS/MMS) and Google will probably lose interest when they turn their attention to their 10014124120412412th attempt at a chat app.

[uni_baconcat]

I have two questions about RCS.

First, the pricing model. Similar to SMS, RCS is a service provided by carrier. Many carriers include unlimited text messages in their phone plans, but not all carriers do that. And that's only for domestic messaging. When it comes to international communication, would carriers handle RCS like an instant messaging app or charge users per text message like SMS? That could be a huge number on the bill.

Second, the structure and server. Currently, most carriers have given up on making their own RCS infrastructure and let Google's Jibe run it. If iOS joins RCS, and RCS is implemented globally in the future, how would messages be transferred between different carriers, different cloud platforms, and different operating systems?

[lumb63]

I hope a protocol that has built in E2E encryption is the future. RCS is dead on arrival without that.

[dimask]

> Sure, let's trade international protocols for Zuckerware. What could go wrong?

Whatsapp uses the signal protocol, not sure why you would prefer RCS to that.

[matheusmoreira]

This "Zuckerware" is powerful enough to defeat judges, governments. It works just like Signal, same end-to-end encryption implementation.

Network effects make the perfect solutions dead on arrival. It's pointless to complain. I'll just count my blessings instead: never in the history of humanity have so many people used something this secure to communicate with each other.

[jupp0r]

RCS does not support any end to end encryption. Yes you can send end to end encrypted messages over it, same as over SMS, but it's not part of the protocol. I don't hope RCS is the future, I don't want my ISP or any intermediate party to read my text messages, thank you.

[taf2]

Traveling with family it’s been nice to use the WhatsApp but it’s ui is and the onboarding was so bad - took about 10 tries to get it working … I’m amazed how many people use it… but pretty hard to compete with 0 cost service…

[tamirzb]

Oh I definitely agree with you that I hope WhatsApp is the past. I sure do hope for something open, not sure if RCS is the solution here though.

In any case, iMessage share the exact same issues and also adds the issue of locking you to a single platform, so at least WhatsApp solves one issue that iMessage has.

[xvector]

> let's trade international protocols for Zuckerware. What could go wrong?

To be clear, you want to use "international protocols" that aren't even E2EE by default over WhatsApp, which is built on the Signal protocol with the help of Signal engineers?

[closeparen]

Carriers are basically infinitely evil all the time. I'd much rather be at the mercy of a Silicon Valley company than an "open standard" that leaves anything up to the telecoms.

[jwr]

What I find amusing is that all of those WhatsApp users don't know or don't care that they are uploading their entire list of contacts (with phone numbers) to Meta/Facebook and syncing it every day.

That "end-to-end encrypted" advertising has done its job, and most people don't want to be bothered with thinking too much anyway.

WhatsApp is a gold mine of real-world social graph data for Facebook/Meta. If you think for a moment how much you can infer by merging that data with other information you get from people using other FB apps and sites, it's incredible.

[rootusrootus]

> I find it amusing that in 2024 people in the US still talk about WhatsApp as a future step.

One person said that. Almost nobody I know has any interest in WhatsApp. The infatuation with putting all of your messaging into Facebook's hands is a European thing. What I don't understand at all is why Europeans think Facebook is superior to Apple.

> With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.

I have a hard time believing that having multiple chat apps is any kind of solution to the problem. The nice thing about iMessage in the US is that it covers about 90% of everyone I talk to. Right out of the box, no asking what ecosystem someone else is using, it just works. And if I'm talking to someone who does not have iMessage ... it still just works, albeit with fewer features.

I heartily disagree that Europe or the rest of the world has a better system. Best would be if every phone from every manufacturer supported a modern protocol equivalent to iMessage or Google's proprietary RCS. Until then, iMessage in the US is the closest things to universal modern messaging.

[sevagh]

>The nice thing about iMessage in the US is that it covers about 90% of everyone I talk to.

You are literally the caricature the OP is railing against.

"How gullible are Americans that they think Apple invented messaging?"

two posts down

"I'm not gonna use Europoor trash, only iMessage or bust"

[00deadbeef]

WhatsApp took off in a big way in Europe before it was acquired by Meta.

Android is more popular in Europe than in the US. WhatsApp provided an early way of easy cross platform communication that was superior to SMS/MMS and didn't involve having to share new usernames or anything like that, it just relied on your existing mobile number.

[oulu2006]

The rest of the world does WhatsApp, Australia/NZ/Southeast Asia/almost all of South America, it's massive.

[tamirzb]

> it still just works, albeit with fewer features.

If it doesn't have features I rely on then I don't see how can I treat it as "it still just works".

> iMessage in the US is the closest things to universal modern messaging.

The key part here is "in the US". What if you want to message someone who is outside the US? To be honest I am not sure about carrier prices in the US, but I am sure the person on the other side of the conversation would get extremely high bills for international MMS messages. Personally I don't see how the words "universal solution" can apply to something that works well in only a single country in the entire world.

[nonseqshitter]

I don’t know if iMessage makes for an antitrust claim. But you are absolutely right: it covers the majority of my friends and family, and for folks that use Android everything still works well enough.

Why would I ever want 6 messaging apps instead of using the default?

[JoeJonathan]

Are people defending WhatsApp, or just saying its widely used? In the places I go, you use it for everything from contacting friends to messaging businesses to schedule appointments. It's unavoidable.

[dimask]

> What I don't understand at all is why Europeans think Facebook is superior to Apple.

It is not facebook vs apple, it is cross-platform vs platform specific (if you do not have an iphone imessage is not even a choice).

[oezi]

> WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram

These are not good options to have secure and private communication.

Signal and Threema should be the choices given.

[barbazoo]

It's interesting that two actually secure apps were missing from that list

[greiskul]

What's wrong with WhatsApp end to end encryption?

[fsflover]

Also Matrix.

[rkagerer]

Could also say it was 'solved' 30 years ago with ICQ (OK, I know it was centralized and insecure, but from a strictly user-experience perspective I honestly liked it better than anything that came since) or maybe 35 years ago with IRC.

[romeoblade]

I miss ICQ, I still remember my number. It was my first instant messenger and even after MSN IM and Yahoo IM got big I still preferred chats on ICQ.

[svachalek]

These are all available in the US but it sounds like you have the same problem we do. There are way too many of them and they aren't compatible.

[skrebbel]

In most countries one of these is the one everybody uses, and it works on every phone. In the US, the country is split, mostly by economic class, between people on iMessage and “the rest”.

I’m not saying “whatsapp is effectively a monopoly in $country” is great, but it’s better than the US situation. You can buy a $50 phone and use the ubiquitous messaging app.

[spiderice]

I don’t think relying on Facebook for your entire countries messaging is considered “a solved problem”.

Relying on any one company is bad. But Facebook might be just about the worst.

[tamirzb]

It's a solved problem as in it's one single problem that is solved. I agree that WhatsApp is a really bad solution overall, just compared to iMessage it does solve the cross-platform issue.

I would also by far prefer a more open solution, but between relying on Apple for your country's messaging to relying on Facebook, at least by relying on Facebook you have one less issue.

[mettamage]

Except for all the US people that keep in touch with Europeans! Source: me (a European) that has a GF in the US. They all get converted to WhatsApp :')

[vishnugupta]

> Where I'm from already 10+ years ago every single person you know would have a WhatsApp account.

It's the same with payment system. I hear that bank to bank transfer is still a big pain in the US and that check payment is prevalent there.

[johnnyanmac]

It's not really a "big" pain these days, but it was definitely a problem more annoying than it should have been for much longer than it needed to be. The main problem as you can guess, is that US transfers are either fast and relatively expensive, or free/cheap and takes a few days.

Ofc in this case Musk "solves" this problem as Venmo is one of the most popular solutions, as a spinoff of Paypal. just what we needed, to turn our financial transfers into social media.

Zelle is a much better solution nearly identical to what a bank to bank transfer is, but it's not quite as prevalent.

[averageRoyalty]

> With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.

I don't think this is accurate. In ANZ at least it's fairly uncommon, and I'd imagine there are a number of other similar countries. I would be surprised if the number isn't 100m+ first world users who don't fall into that bucket, not including the US.

[jbm]

I can't speak for everything else, but LINE was not well known for privacy.

Everything people complain about WRT Meta was being done with impunity; their privacy policy basically said that they could read your messages and tailor ads based on them.

I really don't understand why people are crowing about using platforms like LINE and WhatsApp and sneering at Americans; they are not better.