re: Google releasing RCS in the US

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right......

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Explain your reasoning/fears please.

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Messaging should be completely agnostic. Just like email with SMTP, anyone should be able to run a server and send and receive from anyone else.

If you want to see where we should be going regarding messaging, then Matrix is the answer.

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Great, I am all for open standards. I especially like decentralized systems. However, in essence Matrix is yet another chat app. Users not only have to be exposed to it and learn about it, but they then have to install an app and create an account. That's friction that I'm afraid will prevent it from ever achieving ubiquitous adoption.

I somewhat agree with your point, but the problem with the end to end encryption argument is that the current solution is not encrypted anyway. So it is not like it is worse than what we currently have, it is clearly better as far as features, and the same privacy wise

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No end to end encryption and with users being default funneled through the major carriers RCS servers. So, data collection en masse, and data sold to advertisers.

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RCS is no different than SMS/MMS in this regard. How is this a "takeover"?

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Are the major carriers really going to allow anyone to join the network? Or will we see them blacklisting servers for political wrongthink/speech?

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Again, how is this different than SMS?

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I agree with you in that the friction in the process is a tough fight, which is exactly why RCS is being pushed by the major corporations (and probably governments as well). They know that they can easily onboard most users and that most won't care about the lack of end-to-end encryption and that their data can be collected and sold.

And that's why I say that RCS is a bad path for us to go down.

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Well, it's the same path we're already on, except with better features.

Would I prefer a different path? Of course. Like you, and unlike many, I value privacy. I don't think E2EE is in the RCS spec, however I think it's possible to add it on top as an app feature once the API is exposed.

In the meantime, though, this will be a huge upgrade for a billion SMS users, and the corporate control structure is basically unchanged.