this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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The EU wants to decrease reliance on American technology. Hereโ€™s what happened when a POLITICO reporter tried to live and work without it.

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[โ€“] ranzispa@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

To be fair, I recently discovered RCS messages. Very cool. I've been using those quite a bit recently and with many people I do not need Whatsapp anymore.

[โ€“] vogi@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I did try RCS with a couple of friends and its great.

The only problem I have with it is the same I have with WhatsApp is that I cannot make sure what is happening on the server side (or even on the client side for that matter if its closed source) and what they are doing with the meta data. It seems like they would still be able to map out with whom I talk to and when (even if the content is encrypted which is not the default with RCS i believe).

[โ€“] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

Messages are end to end encrypted, I believe it is by default.

Google definitely has some metadata if you use the android app, at the very least the list of your contacts.

Regarding who you talk to, maybe: messages do not necessarily go through the servers of Google, it depends whether your carrier has their own servers.

Either way, I do see this as a great advantage over Whatsapp: while this system is still mostly controlled by Google the underlying technology most definitely is designed for decentralization and I know quite a few carriers are beginning to support it.

[โ€“] tramdan@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can't use RCS without Google, though.

[โ€“] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can't use WhatsApp without Meta. What's your point?

[โ€“] tramdan@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The point is not relying on US tech. It's in the title.

[โ€“] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

The person went back to the smartphone in order to use WhatsApp. I feel RCS is a better option as it doesn't strictly need Google, the reason why it is google is that google has developed the only application which supports RCS.