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SMS is the only federated messaging system guaranteed available on all cell phones. That makes it more useful than any walled garden.


It's weird to me that so many people don't seem to get that. SMS/MMS are terrible in many ways, but they have the benefit of the universal network effect, without even trying.

Sure, if I want to send someone videos, or do regular group chats, I'm going to find an alternative platform. But if it's just a casual contact, or I don't anticipate needing these things, I'll just stick with SMS.


Not end to end encrypted lol


I'll have you know all of my texts are encrypted with GPG.

90% of my time is spent copying and pastingl...help me.


True cypherpunks encrypt their messages by hand using a one-time pad.

Not having any friends makes this less of a burden than you might think.


That's a hard problem that a lot of smart people are trying to figure out. I'd say there's been good progress.

https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10252671?hl=en

I think this is exclusive to Jibe and Google Messages but a widespread (in terms of installs) proof-of-concept is still pretty cool, and better than nothing.

The bigger problem is adding E2E to SMS is going to attract the FBI's ire, they really really really like reading everybody's texts.




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