Comment on It's time to stop using SMS, here's why!
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 2 days agoAnd don’t forget that when those apps eventually die, or the company behind them goes sour, you have to switch EVERYTHING again, and hope that everyone you know does, too.
This has NEVER been an issue with SMS. So for all the bad, it does one thing really well: convenience.
As much as I’d love to move to a secure message platform, this definitely falls into the “more trouble than it’s worth” category, and that’s disappointing.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 days ago
In many cases those apps are not necessarily tied to any specific service. That’s why many prefer federated FOSS services.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I mean, Signal (the messenger that Privacy Guides recommends) only works with Signal, right? And if I recall, it was difficult or not even possible to back up your texts from one device to another.
SMS, especially for anyone who isn’t tech-savvy in the least, “just works” without any setup.
How do you convince people to move away from that?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t, I’m saying it doesn’t appeal to the majority of people.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 days ago
Yes, that is one of many potential alternatives. Many others can be run on a variety of servers, with a variety of apps.
Sure, but most people these days are expected to have email these days, and signing up isn’t any more complicated than that. It’s not that hard.
You send them the video in OP. Or try to send them literally any video via SMS. Someone sent me a video of their kids singing happy birthday for me. It was a really beautiful moment lived through the lens of a potato.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Yes,but smaller market share means less optimistic future, or not enough incentive to continue the project, or harder to convince someone to use it.
Signing up isn’t the hurdle… Convincing someone they should install a second app for messaging when nobody they know uses it would be a bigger challenge.
Google and Apple teaming up would effectively eliminate basic SMS, but that likely wouldn’t solve issues like privacy or data ownership.
Dude, I went on a mission to convince the people I know to move away from corporately owned email and to use a private provider. It was excrutitingly difficult, and I don’t think a single person switched.
Family would constantly “not get it” and continued to email my old email address, too, like they thought this was a phase. lol. It was insane.
Personally, I find switching messenger providers to be more difficult than email, so I’m not hopeful that someone would convert without having some strong motivations first.