> The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure. They leak sensitive metadata and place your data in the hands of telecommunications companies.
Ok I get that on Android the situation is such that, as a message provider, you don't give away "metadata" ie who is texting whom, keeping that data either for yourself or the highest bidder. WhatsApp, too, fuss about e2e encryption while conveniently not talking about the value of "metadata" for ad targeting and even want to aggressively grab and upload your contacts at every turn (despite it being illegal in EU to share PII without explicit and documented and revocable consent of all individual phone number holders stored in your phone book). But why does this change come only on Android? Would it be suicidal for signal to drop SMS/MMS when the default messaging app (iMessage) does fall back to SMS/MMS on iOS as is well known?
Ok I get that on Android the situation is such that, as a message provider, you don't give away "metadata" ie who is texting whom, keeping that data either for yourself or the highest bidder. WhatsApp, too, fuss about e2e encryption while conveniently not talking about the value of "metadata" for ad targeting and even want to aggressively grab and upload your contacts at every turn (despite it being illegal in EU to share PII without explicit and documented and revocable consent of all individual phone number holders stored in your phone book). But why does this change come only on Android? Would it be suicidal for signal to drop SMS/MMS when the default messaging app (iMessage) does fall back to SMS/MMS on iOS as is well known?