– because I don’t care about your preference of social messaging app anymore but I do care about mine.
iOS, the thing on iPhones, gets updated regularly with new versions; 26, 26.1, 26.2, etc, etc. We’re on 26.4 right now. 26.5 is rumoured to be the update that brings end-to-end encryption to RCS.
RCS is a messaging protocol, like SMS (“text messages”) is a messaging protocol. You’ve been using protocols ever since you picked up a smartphone or even used the Internet with a computer. E-mail uses protocols, so does the web. That’s your crash course in protocols.
RCS stands for Rich Communication Service. Means very little still, I bet. OK, so let’s break it down from the back, it’s a service, that lets you communicate, sure – but how’s it gonna make me rich, Lief?
Rich doesn’t mean that kind of rich, it means you can send things more complex than just text over a text message; photos etc. You know, like you do with iMessage blue bubbles, Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp. You can make groups, too. Done – I’ve explained it to you.
OK, let’s backtrack to the bit where I used the word, protocol. What’s so special about that word is that RCS is not an app. A protocol – you might have heard it in a sci-fi or military context – is a way of doing things. With a protocol, you formalise how things work. In the case of RCS, the protocol formalises the method of communication between phones, so people with either Android or iOS phones can chat, it doesn’t matter which. Not important? No, it is.
The RCS protocol isn’t run by just one greedy megalomaniac, it’s run by a conglomerate of greedy megalomaniacs. This is a good thing. They are called the GSMA and they can disagree and form a committee of greedy megalomaniacs who, in an ideal world, can work together in harmony and not ruin the protocol they’re working on. They can make something good. The point I’m burying here is they’re not Meta. This means privacy.
RCS has been around for a long time now, but hasn’t been good enough for me to afford to drop my social media in favour of it, not until this report of it soon supporting end-to-end encryption on iOS. Fucking nerds and their big words. No, really, it’s good that the term, end-to-end encryption, isn’t dolled up in a corporately think-tanked brand name for you. It’s descriptive of what it is. You’re at one end of the line, your friend is at the other. There’s a service in the middle e.g. WhatsApp, RCS carriers, iMessage, etc. Those services, for all the good they seem to be doing for you, might someday (and one has already: Meta) become corrupt and try to take over the world. If it weren’t for end-to-end encryption (read: security), the service could easily read what you’re saying to each other and use the insight, gained from that, to control your newsfeed and influence your views. Heaven forbid that, but Meta do it. They’ve been caught doing it, and charged for it; I’ve believed they do it since the Cambridge Analytica scandal and now that I’ve got RCS as the escape coming up, I can say without fear of being the village kook, that I’m going to stop using them and ignore any protest from the people who believe they have nothing to hide and want me to stay on their feeds.
RCS with end-to-end encryption, on iOS, allowing me to chat with friends on Android, with far less fear of my chats being mined for adware attacks on the rest of the world; this has me glad, relieved and in a very small way, happy. RCS might actually cure my addiction to the newsfeed that comes with every other messaging app I have to use out of social pressure, peer ignorance and scepticism. I hope it could do that for others too.