I am looking to replace my phones text message client with something better. I am trying to make my phone clean, minimalist and less addicting (degoogling too). I even installed Niagara launcher, to give an idea of the kind of aesthetic I am looking for. Is there anything out there folks reccomend? Bonus points if its ethical and pro-privacy.
What they found though was that people were just using it for SMS, not realizing that this meant it was insecure. People kept choosing convenience over security. Removing that support was well messaged almost a year before it was done; that’s the slowest rug pull I’ve ever seen.
Locking it to phone numbers? THAT was an untrustworthy move. But removing SMS meant that people could no longer pretend to be secure when they really weren’t.
I don’t have a screenshot handy, but it was very clearly communicated through both colour and iconography whether or not a conversation was encrypted. For people who still couldn’t tell, like my elderly relatives, removing sms support meant they went from 10% encrypted communications back to zero and forced the rest of us to expose ourselves again to stay in touch
Why? If they were already using Signal, they weren’t about to stop using it when it dropped SMS. If they weren’t using it… any encryption was window dressing anyway.
I’m not interested in arguing and have already shared my experience, hope you have a nice rest of your day. From their perspective, “texting” most people just quit working and someone had to “fix” it by switching them back to their phone’s default sms client. It’s pretty clear you haven’t been tech support for an elder, a lot of people aren’t aware of these things or making real decisions about them at all. Texting at all is a big ask, they need help looking at/sending pictures, a separate app is way too much friction