this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
731 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

55748 readers
2723 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
enu
[email protected]
L4s
731
Signal and Threema want nothing to do with WhatsApp (www.androidpolice.com)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
231 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mightyfoolish 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

While I do think you are correct, you have to remember a few things:

  1. SMS really isn't used outside the US (and iMessage pretty much was the death of text messages and now iMessage also supports RCS)
  2. Open source projects can be strict about following a moral code
  3. Anything more than just sending secure messages is just an attack vector and more layers of code to maintain
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Idk about other countries. But in India, SMS is pretty big for businesses to send updates to the customers. Like 2FA for bank transactions, delivery tracking, govt alerts etc. Customer to customer is almost nil except on rare occasions when maybe the internet is down and you need to send an urgent text.

And I should mention that domestic SMS is free (included with any active cellular plan)

[–] mightyfoolish 1 points 4 months ago

Very good point. I did forget about that. That's pretty much the only time most of my family will look at actual SMS messages.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

A bit offtopic, but, are SMS free on the US?

Indeed, in my country SMS are not used at all. Too expensive compared to alternatives.

[–] FMT99 2 points 4 months ago

Here I pay 1 euro per month extra for unlimited calls+SMS. Still no one uses it.

[–] mightyfoolish 1 points 4 months ago

Most plans include unlimited text messaging.