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GrapheneOS is building its own RCS support to cut Google Messages out of the picture
(www.androidauthority.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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Well, yeah, Whatsapp is e2e encrypted but also I'm pretty sure it's known that the app can/does use chat data on the client side. If they aren't doing that, they could always start someday because for the conversations to be readable they are decrypted on the device end for each user. And I would put nothing past Meta.
I'm in the US. Group chats infamously have this "green/blue bubble" issue where many iPhone users would have a group chat (automatically using iMessage) and then if an android user gets added, the chat gets downgraded to MMS I think and the android user shows as a green bubble. It's a weird cultural thing where the iPhone users (as designed by apple) think the android user has a crappy phone because they designed their ecosystem like that. I am sure overall many people use non-sms apps but it's pretty rare for someone to assume I use Whatsapp, they typically ask first. And people using signal is also rare ime. But I'm sure all this would be much different for younger people than me. I know Snapchat is still pretty popular and I've barely used it (hated it).
Wow, I've heard about "green bubbles" but I assumed that was something teenagers grew out of. Hearing that Snapchat is still around is crazy, I used it back when smartphones were still a cool toy and haven't thought about it since!
In the UK we've all got unlimited calls and texts (i.e. SMS) but MMS never became free. Or maybe it did (though I've not seen an operator mention it for over a decade) but by then everyone was already using internet-based IMs. WhatsApp had already become the main one before Facebook bought it, and you already know how resistant people are to change.
You'd think and hope so lol. But just a couple years ago my partner was in a work related group chat where that happened. Full grown adults chastising others for defiling their blue bubbles or whatever. Super silly but afaik still a thing.
That's super interesting concerning MMS messages still costing extra in the uk. My understanding of that tech is that it was just a wrapper around email. Each phone number would have an email address like phonenumber@mms.carrier.com and all the carrier is doing there is translating phone numbers to email addresses and vice versa and kinda hiding that it's doing it. I haven't really known if MMS affects my plan for a long time, I think those usually were included with unlimited texts for the most part. Anyhow yeah for some reason in my experience Americans usually only use Whatsapp due to having international friends or for large group chats that might have international folks in them. And signal is used frequently by more tech savvy people, but most "normies" I know would likely have never tried it. My parents probably haven't even heard of Whatsapp. It's largely a cultural thing.
Hmm, according to Wikipedia it seems like the sender uploads their picture (or whatever the MMS is) to a server, then the receiver gets a SMS with a link to the URL which is opened to download the content in their WAP browser. Seems you can also send an email to that secret email address but that's a separate path.
I did a quick check and my network doesn't even seem to support MMS anymore!