this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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I try not to.
I'll happily use one or more of any of dozens of proper modern, network-based messaging systems. A few off the top of my head, none of which must be tied to hardware/sim/phone number (Signal is working on moving away from phone numbers, and it's still not tied to a phone number the same way RCS is):
Matrix
Signal
Conversations
Simplex
Wire
Or pick an XMPP server and client, there's plenty out there. I was using XMPP on my phone in 2009, chatting, sending uncompressed videos to people on desktops/laptops.
Hell, even Telegram is a thousand times better than this RCS garbage.
Don't get me started on the privacy nightmare of WhatsApp... Holy shit, may as well not even care about privacy or encryption.
(I have most of these messaging apps on my phones and my laptop, because they work).
Unfortunately, no matter how good the alternatives are, you are stuck with whatever is on the other end. I can't force anyone to change their main app for comms. Even if I do manage to get them to install anything else, they will realise they only use it with me and probably drop it next time they change their phone.
While I do agree whatsapp is a privacy nightmare , I also see why it won't go away anytime soon. You only need someone's phone number to contact them, you get easy media transfers although compressed to shit, it's still serviceable and it's carier independant, and most importantly free even internationaly. People even started using it for audio calls due to higher quality audio over the plain voice calls. All these reasons create the perfect mix for the average privacy-ignorant person to overlook any competitors.
Deltachat too, FOSS, E2EE, it relies on users' already existing email accounts to vehicle the messages (https://delta.chat)