I'm really hoping they're doing this to pave the way for an RCS implementation. If it can be done, GOS is in the best position to make it happen, and without RCS, chatting with normies is both extremely inconvenient (large group chats straight up do not work) and categorically insecure. If I could convince all my friends and family to use Signal I would, but they just think I'm on about some weird Edward Snowden shit, and they just write me off as crazy. "Why would I checks notes download software to solve a problem when I could use the one that came with my phone?"
replyDon't give up the good fight! Took some time but I got the whole family to adopt it as we had no common shared platform before, and it's been great.
replyI'm thinking quite the opposite. I hope RCS can die fast. We already have chat apps WhatsApp, signal, telegram, you can even create your own.
I'm quite happy that SMS for one are not something centralized by the giant US big corp. Would be the dream of Google to get all your messages as a gateway.
replySo I looked into this because my idea of RCS was that it was pretty decentralized direct encrypted communication.
replyTIL that RCS was designed as a fairly decentralized protocol where every carrier could run their own RCS servers, but it didnt get adoption. So Google stepped in and built their own routing infrastructure, and now mostly all RCS is centralized on Google's servers (even if you use an iPhone, because the RCS server is mandated by your carrier)
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replyparticularly if you want to support all of the message-body features, of which there are MANY. it's very business-comms oriented.
replyI broadly expect third-party RCS apps to drop that though, like how essentially none support all of MMS. did you know MMS supports slideshows (I built support for this once)? 3d objects (mimetype model/gltf+json)? "timed text" (mimetype text/mp4)?
RCS is really the only thing I truly am annoyed by with rooted devices. If GrapheneOS can build something open that works we should be able to rip it apart and get it to work without passing play integrity.
replyWhat's so difficult about implementing RCS from a technical perspective?
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Thanks! I noticed on one of my phones that RCS breaks once the Messages app is out of date by a certain amount of revisions. I hope this is an arbitrary decision by Google to invalidate older versions, given that the RCS protocol hasn't changed. I wouldn't want the Graphene team to have to keep up with each change Google makes with their Messages app, and instead is a security oversight Google has found in their own app.
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replyalso I think RCS is way to insecure for Graphene OS - they have no way of making sure the communication is actually 100% secure.
replyIn my experience, Graphene OS doesn't make compromises.
Why would they support SMS then?
replySMS is a defacto carrier tech that people expect to work, people also don't expect e2ee or any kind of privacy scheme on SMS but it might be a place to hand communication off to a different tech. Whereas RCS leaks meta data to the goog or worse (I don't know the ins and outs of RCS) but by default I would trust it less then signal, who may also collect meta data leaked through the goog, so I guess the real solution is to be boring and assume there is no security or privacy for anyone of reasonable means.
replyThe world unfortunately uses SMS for 2FA.
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