13 ms·

It's time to stop texting

52 points by schvenk 4y ago

mnd999 4y ago
Mine always go as iMessages, which has none of these issues.
- aendruk 4y ago
  None of the issues mentioned under the section about iMessage? iMessage would be great if Apple allowed cross platform clients. Until then as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t exist. Sent from my iPhone.
  - mnd999 4y ago
    Dick head
    - aendruk 4y ago
      Not sure what I’ve done to elicit that response. Care to elaborate?
schvenk 4y ago
Just published. Abstract: 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.
- torben-friis 4y ago
  > (and millions of others worldwide) Where else do SMS remain common? 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.
  - smcin 4y ago
    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).
    - mrweasel 4y ago
      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.
    - Eduard 4y ago
      Tens or hundreds of millions of people in Europe still use SMS, for messaging? I doubt that: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/mni2bx/sms_vs_messaging_apps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/mni2bx/sms_vs_me... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412598
    - torben-friis 4y ago
      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.
  - schvenk 4y ago
    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.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _dain_ 4y ago
  >confuses all your friends who exactly is confused by SMS?
  - alanbernstein 4y ago
    I'm assuming this is referring to utterly broken iphone/android group messaging.
    - schvenk 4y ago
      ..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.
    - FalconSensei 4y ago
      why utterly broken? Would't iPhone just use SMS in this case?
cratermoon 4y ago
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.
- rpgbr 4y ago
  So use SMS only when in a catastrophic situation?
andrewfromx 4y ago
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.
- smcin 4y ago
  What year was that tipping point, IYO? in the US
  - andrewfromx 4y ago
    IMO 1999
    - atomicnumber3 4y ago
      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.
      - andrewfromx 4y ago
        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.
  - atomicnumber3 4y ago
    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.
linsomniac 4y ago
Where does RCS fit into this?
- projektfu 4y ago
  The author addresses it after discussing iMessage.
nickdothutton 4y ago
It was time to stop (SMS) texting around about 2008. SMS is Lindy.
nerdjon 4y ago
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.
- schvenk 4y ago
  (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.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    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).
  - Enginerrrd 4y ago
adam_arthur 4y ago
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.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  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.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    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.
  - paraselene_ 4y ago
    "send text over the Internet to someone in real time" Sounds a lot like email with push-mail functionalities.
- crazcarl 4y ago
  Maybe I'm being naive, but isn't that just email?
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    If chat apps all used email as the backbone to their messaging, sure. The exact spec doesn’t matter, what matters is that chat apps all work off some single interoperable spec
johnea 4y ago
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...
- 310260 4y ago
  I get what you're saying but the UI and UX of email is a wreck and a half even with a good client. And simple-but-powerful applications like messaging should appeal to the lowest common denominator if they want to be effective and usable.
  - Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
    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.
- jamespwilliams 4y ago
  Email falls at the very first hurdle presented in the article (“No privacy whatsoever” applies just as well to email as it does to SMS).
  - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
    "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".
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
Yes. Put the government tracking device down. No don't switch to another american surveillance service.
josephcsible 4y ago
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.
- Groxx 4y ago
  > your phone number is yours 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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wigster 4y ago
    in the UK, mobile companies have to allow you to port it.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > 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.
    - tzs 4y ago
mongol 4y ago
SMS is from an era when the focus was on protocols, not apps. Unfortunately that era seem unlikely to return.
- faddyfadfad 4y ago
  "Unfortunately"? How do you figure?
  - Pxtl 4y ago
    Like how Google abandoned XMPP.
  - arcanemachiner 4y ago
    Openness > Vendor lock-in
  - somat 4y ago
    Unfortunate because with a protocol first mindset interoperability is easy, the app first mindset makes interoperability almost impossible.
  - mongol 4y ago
    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.
einpoklum 4y ago
> The first ... will give you a great messaging experience Already sounds suspicious. > you’ll need to sign up for a new app to get it. Sign up? Sounds like somebody is running a centralized server that's tracking me then. > The second ... sometimes fails to deliver messages without telling you It tells me when the message cannot be sent. I don't like it that some central authority knows what's the status of my correspondent. > send tiny, blurry photos and videos; It won't, since I won't send any of that stuff. In messaging, a word is worth a thousand images. > only works on your phone (not your computer); good, that means no centrally-managed identity. > confuses all your friends I have yet to meet a person who gets confused by receiving a text message. > and might lose all your messages if you switch phones; As opposed to _not_ losing them? Now _that_ would be terrible. Although I'm sure the government in my country keeps a copy anyway. > limits the length of your messages; Yeah, that's kind of annoying. > makes some of your friends feel inferior to others Because they, umm, got an SMS? I don't understand. > and offers no privacy whatsoever. Well, that's true, but also not much of an illusion of privacy either. ... Anyway, I'll keep my text messaging, thank you very much.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
_yb2s 4y ago
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.
- ariehkovler 4y ago
  > only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp 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.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It's not ideal to give Facebook that much control over communications.
    - LordDragonfang 4y ago
      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.
  - Ajedi32 4y ago
    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.
310260 4y ago
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.
rad_gruchalski 4y ago
SMS is a mess in the US.
faddyfadfad 4y ago
Nah, the only way to get people to stop texting will be to remove it. It's just too damn useful to not use.
Pxtl 4y ago
I don't have free data on my phone, but I have unlimited sms. In this way I only pay $15CAD per month. Just use sms.
ariehkovler 4y ago
I don't think I've sent an SMS in more than five years. But outside of the US, everyone uses WhatsApp with E2E encryption baked in.
- klodolph 4y ago
  Depends on which country. 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.
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  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.
  - thefz 4y ago
    Or authenticators, such as Authy or Google Auth. 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.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
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.
nixass 4y ago
I cannot remember last time I sent an SMS. Seems like SMS is still very much alive in US
pipeline_peak 4y ago
> 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.
vanous 4y ago
No, thank you. SMS just works. Locally, internationally, between androids, apples, penguins, berries, without data, unlimited for some.
kubb 4y ago
Here in Europe everyone has WhatsApp. Even my grandma has it.
pkulak 4y ago
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. :/
- schvenk 4y ago
  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.
onpointed 4y ago
SMS, and phonelines in general, are federated. Different providers can talk to each other. That is a huge feature.
istillwritecode 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
klodolph 4y ago
> Apple uses the green bubbles as a PR tactic to make Android users seem inferior. I've heard this sentiment before but it seems nothing short of insane to me. What's the foundation for this?
- pwinnski 4y ago
  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. It's not just PR, it's an important signal.
  - allemagne 4y ago
    Full quote: >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.
- afavour 4y ago
  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.
- amf12 4y ago
  Here are some links which were posted on HN that discuss this. - https://archive.fo/RJ7bl https://archive.fo/RJ7bl - https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-gross-e03b52b12fed https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-...
fitblipper 4y ago
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.
recursive 4y ago
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)
rglullis 4y ago
It's time to stop using centralized messaging services, too. WhatsApp, Telegram and even Signal are platforms controlled by single entities.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  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.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    I will take "What is an example of a false dichotomy?" for $400, Alex. What if the choices include Matrix?
afavour 4y ago
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.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > 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.
- schvenk 4y ago
  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.
ngrilly 4y ago
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.
- schvenk 4y ago
  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.
slowhadoken 4y ago
Isn’t this guy advocating for a trend that’s 10+ years old at this point.
Barrin92 4y ago
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.
pwinnski 4y ago
It's time to stop using RSS for podcasts, instead let's use Spotify. It's time to stop using https, instead let's use a new protocol owned by Facebook to visit web pages. It's time to stop using IRC, instead let's use Slack. It's time to stop using email, instead let's use a proprietary messaging app. OR let's not commit everything to corporate-controlled protocols and platforms, and keep SMS, RSS, HTTPS, email, and so on. Please.
- rospaya 4y ago
  Telecoms and after that Apple killed SMS. I'm for open standards as much as the next guy, but we were forced into this situation by big corporations.
- chaxor 4y ago
  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.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  SMS is controlled by your carrier and it spies on you.
mrkeen 4y ago
If my words are too sensitive for SMS, I'm not going to put them on WhatsApp.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
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).
throw_m239339 4y ago
Everybody relient on proprietaries systems to communicate? That's the dystopia people want to live in? The united states of Facebook?
heikkile 4y ago
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. Edit: this is in Denmark.
- valarauko 4y ago
  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.
jawns 4y ago
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.
- tw20212021 4y ago
  Whatsapp? I also liked Hangouts, but they botched it.
- sp332 4y ago
  If you use a Google Voice number, you can send and receive SMS messages with a phone number that also show up in your Gmail search.
- schvenk 4y ago
  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.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  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.
wafer-bw 4y ago
Signal dropped SMS fallback and thus cemented itself as a low-adoption app in NA.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  Does the same apply to WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.?
rr888 4y ago
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.
mfuzzey 4y ago
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.
- progval 4y ago
  These threads are always full of "here in $country, everyone uses $protocol" statements as if one's experience is representative of their country. I'm in France too, and only use SMS with friends and family. My mom asks me from time to time to install Whatsapp, but that's it.
stonogo 4y ago
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.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
stbede 4y ago
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.
hulitu 4y ago
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.
dusted 4y ago
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></
verdenti 4y ago
I hate texting. So much fiddling with the fingers for something I could say in 30 seconds face to face/over the phone.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
heelix 4y ago
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.
chrismcb 4y ago
People still text? Between Facebook and WhatsApp and some others I rarely send an actual text.
- nichos 4y ago
  You really don't send or receive text messages from anyone? Curious about your age and country of residence.
deafpolygon 4y ago
I don't SMS anymore. I am working on ditching my phone entirely.
nunez 4y ago
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)
graynk 4y ago
I haven’t sent an SMS in literal years, so the backlash in this thread is very interesting to me. I wonder if it’s a strictly US thing
helf 4y ago
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

52 points by schvenk 4y ago

mnd999 4y ago

Mine always go as iMessages, which has none of these issues.

aendruk 4y ago
None of the issues mentioned under the section about iMessage? iMessage would be great if Apple allowed cross platform clients. Until then as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t exist. Sent from my iPhone.
- mnd999 4y ago
  Dick head
  - aendruk 4y ago
    Not sure what I’ve done to elicit that response. Care to elaborate?

schvenk 4y ago

Just published. Abstract: 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.

torben-friis 4y ago
> (and millions of others worldwide) Where else do SMS remain common? 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.
- smcin 4y ago
  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).
  - mrweasel 4y ago
    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.
  - Eduard 4y ago
    Tens or hundreds of millions of people in Europe still use SMS, for messaging? I doubt that: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/mni2bx/sms_vs_messaging_apps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/mni2bx/sms_vs_me... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412598
  - torben-friis 4y ago
    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.
- schvenk 4y ago
  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.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> 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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_dain_ 4y ago
>confuses all your friends who exactly is confused by SMS?
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  I'm assuming this is referring to utterly broken iphone/android group messaging.
  - schvenk 4y ago
    ..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.
  - FalconSensei 4y ago
    why utterly broken? Would't iPhone just use SMS in this case?

cratermoon 4y ago

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.

rpgbr 4y ago
So use SMS only when in a catastrophic situation?

andrewfromx 4y ago

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.

smcin 4y ago
What year was that tipping point, IYO? in the US
- andrewfromx 4y ago
  IMO 1999
  - atomicnumber3 4y ago
    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.
    - andrewfromx 4y ago
      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.
- atomicnumber3 4y ago
  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.

linsomniac 4y ago

Where does RCS fit into this?

projektfu 4y ago
The author addresses it after discussing iMessage.

nickdothutton 4y ago

It was time to stop (SMS) texting around about 2008. SMS is Lindy.

nerdjon 4y ago

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.

schvenk 4y ago
(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.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  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).
- Enginerrrd 4y ago

adam_arthur 4y ago

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.

ryandrake 4y ago
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.
- Sakos 4y ago
  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.
- paraselene_ 4y ago
  "send text over the Internet to someone in real time" Sounds a lot like email with push-mail functionalities.
crazcarl 4y ago
Maybe I'm being naive, but isn't that just email?
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  If chat apps all used email as the backbone to their messaging, sure. The exact spec doesn’t matter, what matters is that chat apps all work off some single interoperable spec

johnea 4y ago

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...

310260 4y ago
I get what you're saying but the UI and UX of email is a wreck and a half even with a good client. And simple-but-powerful applications like messaging should appeal to the lowest common denominator if they want to be effective and usable.
- Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
  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.
jamespwilliams 4y ago
Email falls at the very first hurdle presented in the article (“No privacy whatsoever” applies just as well to email as it does to SMS).
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  "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".

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

Yes. Put the government tracking device down. No don't switch to another american surveillance service.

josephcsible 4y ago

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.

Groxx 4y ago
> your phone number is yours 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wigster 4y ago
  in the UK, mobile companies have to allow you to port it.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > 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.
  - tzs 4y ago

mongol 4y ago

SMS is from an era when the focus was on protocols, not apps. Unfortunately that era seem unlikely to return.

faddyfadfad 4y ago
"Unfortunately"? How do you figure?
- Pxtl 4y ago
  Like how Google abandoned XMPP.
- arcanemachiner 4y ago
  Openness > Vendor lock-in
- somat 4y ago
  Unfortunate because with a protocol first mindset interoperability is easy, the app first mindset makes interoperability almost impossible.
- mongol 4y ago
  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.

einpoklum 4y ago

> The first ... will give you a great messaging experience Already sounds suspicious. > you’ll need to sign up for a new app to get it. Sign up? Sounds like somebody is running a centralized server that's tracking me then. > The second ... sometimes fails to deliver messages without telling you It tells me when the message cannot be sent. I don't like it that some central authority knows what's the status of my correspondent. > send tiny, blurry photos and videos; It won't, since I won't send any of that stuff. In messaging, a word is worth a thousand images. > only works on your phone (not your computer); good, that means no centrally-managed identity. > confuses all your friends I have yet to meet a person who gets confused by receiving a text message. > and might lose all your messages if you switch phones; As opposed to _not_ losing them? Now _that_ would be terrible. Although I'm sure the government in my country keeps a copy anyway. > limits the length of your messages; Yeah, that's kind of annoying. > makes some of your friends feel inferior to others Because they, umm, got an SMS? I don't understand. > and offers no privacy whatsoever. Well, that's true, but also not much of an illusion of privacy either. ... Anyway, I'll keep my text messaging, thank you very much.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

_yb2s 4y ago

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.

ariehkovler 4y ago
> only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp 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.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's not ideal to give Facebook that much control over communications.
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    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.
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  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.

310260 4y ago

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.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

SMS is a mess in the US.

faddyfadfad 4y ago

Nah, the only way to get people to stop texting will be to remove it. It's just too damn useful to not use.

Pxtl 4y ago

I don't have free data on my phone, but I have unlimited sms. In this way I only pay $15CAD per month. Just use sms.

ariehkovler 4y ago

I don't think I've sent an SMS in more than five years. But outside of the US, everyone uses WhatsApp with E2E encryption baked in.

klodolph 4y ago
Depends on which country. 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.
benjaminwootton 4y ago
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.
- thefz 4y ago
  Or authenticators, such as Authy or Google Auth. 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.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

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.

nixass 4y ago

I cannot remember last time I sent an SMS. Seems like SMS is still very much alive in US

pipeline_peak 4y ago

> 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.

vanous 4y ago

No, thank you. SMS just works. Locally, internationally, between androids, apples, penguins, berries, without data, unlimited for some.

kubb 4y ago

Here in Europe everyone has WhatsApp. Even my grandma has it.

pkulak 4y ago

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. :/

schvenk 4y ago
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.

onpointed 4y ago

SMS, and phonelines in general, are federated. Different providers can talk to each other. That is a huge feature.

istillwritecode 4y ago

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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

klodolph 4y ago

> Apple uses the green bubbles as a PR tactic to make Android users seem inferior. I've heard this sentiment before but it seems nothing short of insane to me. What's the foundation for this?

pwinnski 4y ago
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. It's not just PR, it's an important signal.
- allemagne 4y ago
  Full quote: >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.
afavour 4y ago
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.
amf12 4y ago
Here are some links which were posted on HN that discuss this. - https://archive.fo/RJ7bl https://archive.fo/RJ7bl - https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-gross-e03b52b12fed https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-...

fitblipper 4y ago

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.

recursive 4y ago

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)

rglullis 4y ago

It's time to stop using centralized messaging services, too. WhatsApp, Telegram and even Signal are platforms controlled by single entities.

howinteresting 4y ago
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.
- rglullis 4y ago
  I will take "What is an example of a false dichotomy?" for $400, Alex. What if the choices include Matrix?

afavour 4y ago

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.

barbazoo 4y ago
> 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.
schvenk 4y ago
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.

ngrilly 4y ago

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.

schvenk 4y ago
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.

slowhadoken 4y ago

Isn’t this guy advocating for a trend that’s 10+ years old at this point.

Barrin92 4y ago

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.

pwinnski 4y ago

It's time to stop using RSS for podcasts, instead let's use Spotify. It's time to stop using https, instead let's use a new protocol owned by Facebook to visit web pages. It's time to stop using IRC, instead let's use Slack. It's time to stop using email, instead let's use a proprietary messaging app. OR let's not commit everything to corporate-controlled protocols and platforms, and keep SMS, RSS, HTTPS, email, and so on. Please.

rospaya 4y ago
Telecoms and after that Apple killed SMS. I'm for open standards as much as the next guy, but we were forced into this situation by big corporations.
chaxor 4y ago
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.
tomjen3 4y ago
SMS is controlled by your carrier and it spies on you.

mrkeen 4y ago

If my words are too sensitive for SMS, I'm not going to put them on WhatsApp.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

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).

throw_m239339 4y ago

Everybody relient on proprietaries systems to communicate? That's the dystopia people want to live in? The united states of Facebook?

heikkile 4y ago

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. Edit: this is in Denmark.

valarauko 4y ago
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.

jawns 4y ago

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.

tw20212021 4y ago
Whatsapp? I also liked Hangouts, but they botched it.
sp332 4y ago
If you use a Google Voice number, you can send and receive SMS messages with a phone number that also show up in your Gmail search.
schvenk 4y ago
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.
LordDragonfang 4y ago
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.

wafer-bw 4y ago

Signal dropped SMS fallback and thus cemented itself as a low-adoption app in NA.

barbazoo 4y ago
Does the same apply to WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.?

rr888 4y ago

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.

mfuzzey 4y ago

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.

progval 4y ago
These threads are always full of "here in $country, everyone uses $protocol" statements as if one's experience is representative of their country. I'm in France too, and only use SMS with friends and family. My mom asks me from time to time to install Whatsapp, but that's it.

stonogo 4y ago

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.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

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.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

stbede 4y ago

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.

hulitu 4y ago

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.

dusted 4y ago

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></

verdenti 4y ago

I hate texting. So much fiddling with the fingers for something I could say in 30 seconds face to face/over the phone.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

heelix 4y ago

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.

chrismcb 4y ago

People still text? Between Facebook and WhatsApp and some others I rarely send an actual text.

nichos 4y ago
You really don't send or receive text messages from anyone? Curious about your age and country of residence.

deafpolygon 4y ago

I don't SMS anymore. I am working on ditching my phone entirely.

nunez 4y ago

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)

graynk 4y ago

I haven’t sent an SMS in literal years, so the backlash in this thread is very interesting to me. I wonder if it’s a strictly US thing

helf 4y ago

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