Agreed. Messaging absolutely blows compared to the glory days of a million interoperable chat clients with no one looking to exploit users for "increased engage

Agreed. Messaging absolutely blows compared to the glory days of a million interoperable chat clients with no one looking to exploit users for "increased engagement." I miss it all of the time. Beeper's trying to bring it back, but you can see, in real-time, how actively other companies are in trying to lock them out.