It has it in its current documentation (maybe 3.0 too? I forget, but it's new this year), and Apple and Google have had messages to themselves encrypted for a while (but not to each other, which is what the RCS docs are intended to resolve). It took many years to get it documented though (despite loudly claiming RCS is more secure the whole time), and AFAIK none yet implement it. Definitely none with all the documented things it needs to show to be compliant with the spec I read, e.g. key verification - I certainly don't see any of that in Google's "Messages" app! Though hopefully that will all change.

But honestly, in a non-open ecosystem, can you really trust that the near-exclusive two major players are actually playing by the rules? Apple has been relatively protective of its users on privacy stuff, but I've lost all trust in Google at this point.

Yes but there are different specs that “compatible” apps will have to adhere to, basically until everyone is always running auto updating software to the latest version supporting RCS 4.0

Long story short somebody preferred to “ship it” instead of waiting to figure out how to make encryption compatible between iOS and Android. I guess there’s some differences in how the key rings work, but Signal can figure it out and /they’re/ open source so it sucks they ever supported unencrypted messages. They just wanted to say it technically worked for rich text messages and reactions.

Almost none of my RCS conversations are encrypted. Who cares what's in the spec if nobody uses it?

The intended purpose of RCS was to be federated between carriers, just like SMS. If you centralise it then it's just a worse version of any of Google's abandoned chat apps. But there's a realpolitik reason to insist on centralised RCS: because it's already got the reputation of decentralisation, it makes it look like Google is better than it actually is.

That's not quite true. VoLTE was an optional part of 4G in the beginning. I had one of the gaming ASUS phones that shipped with 4G, but no VoLTE. 6 months after getting it, the US phone carriers conspired to make VoLTE mandatory for connecting to their towers, effectively bricking my device. ASUS never issued the firmware update that would have enabled the feature in the modem, which had the capability, and the community hack to enable it never worked for me.

It's true that it's all packet-switched rather than circuit-switched, but IMS traffic is still handled differently than regular data traffic. (The most user-visible implication of this is the QCI difference: cellular phone calls are much more reliable at poor signal strength and high congestion than over-the-top VoIP calls).

Suppose GrapheneOS becomes highly popular. Then I have to fight the average Joe who insists RCS is fine enough.

I understood from other comments that RCS is the default communication channel in N.America an I can sort of see why you want to give people a somewhat less worse option here than Google's Messenger. But RCS should not be the default imho, because lazy people gonna be lazy. So I hereby endorse you to gently push newcomers towards a safe and privacy friendly default by pre-installing Signal or whatever meets the bar and give it a prominent place.

> To me, the only they’re trying to maintain control of is AppleOS-to-AppleOS text communication.

Yes, exactly. Apple and Google are both acting to maintain control and this has resulted in a standard that improves functionality but is effectively poisoned at the technical level. Left to their own devices I'm sure Apple would have preferred to stay with their original solution that is even more closed off.

Idk, I mean RCS on iPhone is just SMS/MMS but fixing like 90% of the issues. I don’t find it that clunky.

Nearly everybody uses it in the USA. It's very common to text people through the default messaging app on your phone there (probably an outgrowth of the popularity of iPhones and iMessage), and backup options would be Instagram, Snapchat for a certain demographic, or Facebook messages. Whatsapp is only for messaging foreigners, and Signal/Telegram are for messaging your drug dealer.

I assume many people would use it due to SMS concerns and difficulty having people move to other platforms. I would personally use it as a fallback to Signal since my current fallback is SMS, which I dont like.

If the protocol is properly e2ee, it does not matter who backs it or hosts it. GrapheneOS would be in control of the client which is what matters in an e2ee system.

In the US everyone with an iphone uses RCS, so you'll often have family group conversations on it and so on. Whatsapp or signal are comparatively rare (although more common for anyone with overseas family naturally)

This is a very US-centric (and maybe Canada) thing though? Most of the rest of the world doesn't really use or care about iMessage, even on iPhones. So, I think it's rather

-US- iPhone users very often don't want to have SMS/MMS users in their group chats.

The rest of the world is using WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Snapchat, LINE, etc. for group chats (for better or worse), even on iPhone.

I've seen people try, only for it to never actually work (images either compress horribly, to the point there's no reason even sending it, or just fail to send).

MMS bring broken since day 1 in my experience is probably the reason I jumped on internet chat and email, since those actually work as advertised (sure, they has some practical limits, but they tell you about those!). I probably would have sent my mum that image over MMS if MMS actually every worked. Since it never did, using a difference service was a must.

Then again, this feels like an extension of the rest of the phone system. Anything beyond calls between two people, SMS and data that involves connecting to the phone system has always (in my experience) been either janky or broken. No wonder I try to use anything else given the opportunity.

It depends heavily on country, yes. USA is extremely light on WhatsApp, and MMS use is widespread (and has been free for a long time now, and SMS even longer). RCS is a mostly silent upgrade for USA.

I'm not sure which of the two is better tbh. Utterly dominated by a Facebook-owned system, or using something that's crappy enough that people spread out to a variety of systems?