My impression was that Signal dropped SMS integration because it was being used to trick users who really needed security into thinking they were having secure chats when they really weren’t. Given that enabling reliable secure chat is the reason for Signal’s existence, that was a pretty bad problem.
90+% of my mobile and desktop chat with real-world friends is via Signal. I use SMS with friends who don’t have modern phones, with relatives who are mentally impaired, and with businesses.
That was and is a legitimate concern, and I totally stand with their decision. But it could have been handled by making changes to the user interface, blue send button is encrypted , red send button is plain text. By removing sms support people who are unable to use multiple apps moved to other options.
Cannot get grandma to use three different communication apps.
Well it was the signal teams toy , we were just allowed to play with it. 🤷
The problem was that Google started pushing RCS onto everyone, and RCS isn’t accessibly by the same API SMS is. What happened is that Signal would send an SMS, and the response would only appear in Google Messages through RCS.
As someone who never uses RCS (and from an area where nobody else uses RCS knowingly), the removal of SMS capabilities really sucked.
My impression was that Signal dropped SMS integration because it was being used to trick users who really needed security into thinking they were having secure chats when they really weren’t. Given that enabling reliable secure chat is the reason for Signal’s existence, that was a pretty bad problem.
90+% of my mobile and desktop chat with real-world friends is via Signal. I use SMS with friends who don’t have modern phones, with relatives who are mentally impaired, and with businesses.
That was and is a legitimate concern, and I totally stand with their decision. But it could have been handled by making changes to the user interface, blue send button is encrypted , red send button is plain text. By removing sms support people who are unable to use multiple apps moved to other options.
Cannot get grandma to use three different communication apps.
Well it was the signal teams toy , we were just allowed to play with it. 🤷
The problem was that Google started pushing RCS onto everyone, and RCS isn’t accessibly by the same API SMS is. What happened is that Signal would send an SMS, and the response would only appear in Google Messages through RCS.
As someone who never uses RCS (and from an area where nobody else uses RCS knowingly), the removal of SMS capabilities really sucked.