Trust me, I push Signal hard and even donate to it monthly. As I’m sure many of you know, there are always a few contacts who unfortunately refuse to use it.
In this case: do you prefer to use insecure SMS in something like QUIK SMS or Fossify Messages, or do you prefer to bite the Google bullet to get end-to-end encrypted messages (even if the metadata isn’t encrypted)?
I can see good arguments for both sides, so I am curious what Lemmy’s take is.
SMS is not an instant messaging protocol either. Sometimes they arrive quickly, sometimes they don’t arrive at all. :/
Yes, it is. It was always an instant messaging protocol. It may not have been called instant messaging, but that was its intended purpose - initially for carriers to send alerts or other notifications to their customers. Instantly.
The very first SMS was quite literally an instant message from one person to another, saying “Merry Christmas”. In '92. Every Nokia device supported SMS by '93, and many more manufacturers were not far behind.
Occasional technical hiccups (e.g. not received) do not change the originally-intended function. I’ve had more issues sending/receiving RCS messages than SMS/MMS messages.