A quick web search for third-party coverage information tells me that Wanaque has good coverage from Verizon and poor coverage from T-Mobile. It’s easy to guess why T-Mobile might be motivated to change that situation.

Federated systems are one option for this. On one of my sites, the only way people can leave comments is with ActivityPub. They must have a (probably pseudonymous) account on a server to use that, and I hope that most servers have moderation I find acceptable. I can block those that do not.

More sophisticated options for sharing reputation between servers would help here. If, for example five servers I trust block another server as a source of harassment, I’d like to block it as well, automatically.

most people see messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp and other third party apps for personal use only.

In Europe, businesses, especially small businesses often use WhatsApp, to the point of putting its logo next to their phone number on signs. I wonder what creates the perception where you are that messaging apps are for personal use, not business.

Signal, being owned by a nonprofit has a bit more resistance to that than most.

That’s the main reason I recommend it over alternatives with similar technical capabilities, such as WhatsApp.

Subsidized devices blur the line between a fee for terminating service early, and paying off the cost of the device. Perhaps the former should be banned to encourage competition, and the cost of the device and the service clearly separated. That way it’s clear when the device is paid off and (in my imagined ideal regulatory scenario) must be unlocked.

a poor person would have to pay BOTH. An early termination fee AND then go buy a new phone

They probably don’t have to pay the fee. They might owe it legally, but the likely consequences for not paying are some impact on their credit score and inability to get service from that carrier under their own name for a while.

I suppose it depends on whether you think regulation should be used to dissuade poor people from buying expensive phones. That seems like a reasonable enough goal, though I don’t believe that’s the proper role of government.

I’ve always bought phones outright, used when finances so dictated. I agree that’s the wiser approach.

It seems to me that a carrier should be able to lock a subsidized/financed device until it’s paid off. That makes it possible for people who would otherwise not qualify for financing to have relatively up-to-date devices.

A carrier should not be able to lock a device that’s paid off for any length of time.

Google had the chance to make its Hangouts messaging app dominant when it was, briefly the default SMS client on Android devices. They threw that away following pushback from carriers.

I’m glad Google doesn’t have the dominant messaging service, but I find it bizarre anybody still uses SMS when there are so many internet-based options. I have six, and if somebody really wants to use another, I’ll probably add it.

I’m sure Apple shares a lot of the blame, but holy shit how is this not solved in 2024. I shouldn’t have to resort to spam filled shitware from Meta to get remotely modern messaging cross platform

There’s no shortage of options; the problem is getting the people you’re talking to to agree on one you like. I find Signal strikes a good balance between goodness and ease of use, and many people I know who aren’t tech or privacy nerds use it.

I’m guessing not a lot of users know about it. Their ActivityPub implementation is still only about half done.

It will be interesting to see of they promote it heavily when it’s more complete.

There’s nothing keeping them from scraping that kind of data now.

My (self-hosted) Mastodon server seems unable to view profiles on Threads. As far as I can tell, there’s nobody to talk to about that.

I don’t have high hopes about Meta having good intentions here, but I am eager to see platforms that would have previously been walled gardens open up to the federated model. I do think we have some work to do on the open source side to manage the potential massive increase in exposure once Threads users can follow users of other software.

Of course you can pick a server that blocks Threads if you just don’t want to deal with that.

I’m not surprised they could. I’ve worked on things that send SMS messages and I’m aware that carriers filter for spam and scams (perhaps not as effectively as one might hope).

I’m surprised to hear of messages being blocked for mere profanity.

Anyway, SMS sucks, default to something else and fall back to SMS as a last resort. Gently encourage your contacts to use Signal.

SMS fallback. A feature which you can use with any app on Android

SMS fallback is not a common feature of internet-based messaging apps on Android. Signal used to do it, but does not now. I don’t think WhatsApp or Telegram ever did.

I have no doubt about the part where iPhone fans waste no opportunity to tell someone else they should get an iPhone. It’s the other side of the argument that falls flat: Alice receives video from Charlie that’s perfectly fine, but Bob’s iPhone sends a pixelated mess, and Bob says the iPhone is better?

Interest in RCS is recent - newer than iMessage, which launched in 2011. RCS with Google’s proprietary extensions is just another proprietary messaging app, and I am not particularly excited about it.

even so far as “patch” a fix that was created to make it possible for their customers to communicate securely with Android users.

There’s no shortage of options for doing that. What Apple wants is tight control over all of its walled gardens, which should be no surprise given the company’s history. They’re very good at making it appear as if decisions made to increase their profits are aligned with the interests of users. It’s probably even true that someone would have exploited the technique Beeper Mini was using to send spam if Apple hadn’t closed it.

Just doesn’t seem plausible to me. If Alice gets low-quality images from Bob and higher-quality images from Charlie, her most likely assumption if she’s not sophisticated enough to be aware of the cause is that Bob’s phone has a bad camera.

It seems unlikely to have that effect when the recipient presumably communicates with people who have other brands of phone, from whom they receive better looking media.

It seems like an odd decision to me, as it would make the iPhone look like it has a substandard camera to someone receiving media from one by MMS.

MMS does have size limits that can hurt image quality, but I have the impression iOS applies limits of its own that are considerably lower. I’m not sure why anybody in 2024 wouldn’t have at least a couple modern messaging apps, but it seems a lot of people don’t.