this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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The moment when I hear someone talking about SMS it is almost always an American. Can’t recall the last time I sent a text message to someone like that, wouldn’t surprise me if it was 10 years ago (for context: am Dutch)
For most of us Europeans, SMS is like using smoke signs or pigeons
True
It's not just the US, but you gotta realize that SMS has advantages. It isn't better than any other protocol, but it has the major benefit of not being tied to internet connectivity. There are a ton of places where data signals aren't as reliable.
It's universal, in that every carrier I've heard of has it. So it should work no matter what carrier you're on.
It will work right out of the box with any phone you buy because it's carrier based. You don't have to install anything else to use it. You don't have an extra login, no need to remember another password.
It's simple. You type, and that's it. No attachments (that's mms), no stickers, no junk. This makes it fast and easy for anyone to use.
And, you don't have to convince anyone else to install anything.
Obviously, there's benefits to data messaging, I'm not saying there aren't. I use other messaging way more than SMS, and have for maybe a decade now, though what I've used has changed over time.
But, yah, we yanks tend to value it more than the other countries where it's still important. That goes back to the pricing when data became a thing. Anywhere that data was cheap but sms merered, adopted things like whatsapp. Anywhere that sms was cheap, but data expensive used SMS by default. Iirc, Canada is the other big SMS focused nation. I think there's one or two in SEA, and the same in south America. I don't recall any of Europe having been sms focused, nor Africa.
TBH though, I tend to not get why anyone cares what another country uses within its own system. Like, if the EU did away with SMS entirely, it wouldn't prevent the US and Canada from having SMS. And if we did away with messengers via data (as dumb as it would be), y'all would still be fine.
The only time it matters is for international, or directly cross border communication. But there's multiple standards for that kind of communication anyway. Me and you aren't going to exchange phone numbers to use SMS, nor are we likely to use whatsapp together. If we struck up a friendship, we'd figure out what platform we both like, and use it. Since this is lemmy, I suspect it would be matrix or signal or maybe telegram.
Fair points, but it's also completely insecure, which is hugely important to a lot of people.
That "lot of people" probably represent less than 1% of the population. "Normal" people don't use alternatives to SMS because they're more secure, they used them because otherwise they wouldn't be able to communicate with their friends.
You're on a platform where the privacy and open source crowd has a big stronghold, normies don't give a crap about that.
Heck, I'm very tech literate and the only reason I've got an alternative installed on my phone is because I've got two friends with whom it's become a meme that we use anything but SMS, everything else I do via SMS/MMS/RCS.
1% if the population is a lot of people, and encryption is becoming more and more important to "normal" people, otherwise WhatsApp etc. wouldn't be making such a big deal about it as a feature.
If you're using WhatsApp only because you need to pay for SMS or all your friends who have to pay for SMS use it, is privacy such a big deal to you?
The only reason I ever had it installed was because I became friends with people from other countries that had to pay for SMS when we didn't, they would have otherwise used SMS because it's a no brainer to just use the tech that doesn't require data and that's available by default.
Absolutely! Like I said, other protocols have their own beneft, and that's a huge one. It's why SMS for me is limited to really bland stuff when I can't get data signal in a store. Even that, I tend to keep my phone off in stores, but when you're doing "emergency" shopping for someone else, you kinda have to give up a little personal preference
Yeah, it's an excellent fallback due to its ubiquity.
Those are interesting points. I think I’m unaware of how many places there are without a proper data connection. I guess The Netherlands being this small has its benefits! Granted I haven’t traveled everywhere in the Netherlands but whenever I travel somewhere I have a proper connection.
While you are right that sms is the simplest form of messaging a phone can provide, I think nowadays everybody, their parents, and their grandparents know how to WhatsApp, but that might be limited to the Netherlands?
I can’t speak for the rest of Europe but we used to have all kinds of deals to make sms cheap, you could send 1000 messages for 10 bucks. Slowly but surely the internet connectivity as we know it today came around, and while there were still limits on the amount of SMS you could send in the early days, I’m pretty sure we haven’t had those for a while! Maybe we’re just too used to WhatsApp now.
99% of the SMS messages I receive are delivery confirmations and 2FA login codes. I never send any.
I send SM's to my kids when they're on the go, as they religiously disable gsm data and only use wifi, which means they regularly don't get my WhatsApp messages.
Before they got their own smartphone I was scared that their data plans would cost me an arm and a leg, but it turns out they're extremely stingy with their data 🤷♂️
GSM data? Is this 2005? Ahahahahahahah
Why do they they disable data?
An irrational fear of suddenly using all of it up. Before they got their phones, we drilled it into them to be conservative in their data usage. It's not that they complain that they have too little data, or how annoying it is that they have to leave it switched off to conserve it, they somehow are convinced that it is pointless to leave it on. We have mentioned numerous times that we'd be fine with upgrading their data plan, but they don't want to. It's like us in the nineties dialing into our ISP to download e-mail. Weird. Cheap. But weird.
Saves battery too if on a trip.
I think there is plenty of SMS usage in Europe.
It's easy as a technically savy user to lose sight on what less proficient users are using.
Yes, my parents both use perfectly fine their WhatsApp but they still send/receive a lot of SMS.
For context, I'm in France.
That’s interesting. I know a lot of people who WhatsApp with their grandparents though. All you have to do is install it on their phones once and then their phone becomes “the WhatsApp” in my experience