you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 130 points 2 days ago (14 children)

SMS uses cellular, WhatsApp uses internet. Internet connects you anywhere with one flat rate, cellular may charge extra per message or for international communication.

Signal is better, but everyone's grandmother is already on WhatsApp and good luck getting them to switch

  • source
  • hideshow 14 child comments
  • [–] 39 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Back at the turn of the century text messages were exorbitantly priced

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago* (3 children)

    Which is crazy because it literally uses spare bandwidth they didn't use (other than for the clock updates and other housekeeping) and the amount of data used is infinitesimal compared to voice or other data.

    This is why it was free at first as it didn't cost the carrier anything more. This changed quickly when they figured they could charge for it with rates going as high as 20 cents per message in the US. This lead to crazy bills like $5,000.

    https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/they-say-talk-is-cheapbut-a-teenagers-cell-phone-bill-is-almost-5000/83-402630313

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    I remember having only 200 SMS per month and having to ration them carefully because the plans were structured in a way where ordering more resulted in a big price jump.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 child)

    I was at the tail end of pagers so being able to text was normal but using a cell phone to talk was the next great thing. I was always confused why people wanted to go back to texting when they could just talk.

    It wasn't until I had a phone with a physical keyboard that I finally started texting to any degree. It never made sense during the Nokia era for me because it was slow and unintuitive.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    I actually agree with you, why would I want to text on an itty birth screen. Nevertheless, despite all my efforts, I can't seem to get myself to switch to those short voice memos you can send in Signal and similar apps. My brother is a pro with those, but it just feels odd to me.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    I'm in a country where this is apparently still the case. It seems that the major mobile carriers all charge for text messages to other networks.

    WhatsApp is free regardless of your mobile provider. Most here even provide free access to WhatsApp that doesn't count toward your data allotment.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 13 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I keep hoping with this anti-American Big Tech push that Europe and other places are doing they'll get off Meta products. But I'm also not holding my breath.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago

    I work at a company that I strongly suspect had a very serious security breach because of Whatsapp.

    During the outage, we were back to SMS and direct phone calling only. After the system was restored, back to how everything was before, caution be damned, lessons not learned.

    It's not bad enough to have that invasive application as the default means of passing information around (messages, photos, video and even audio, of all things!) on work phones, office personel has it paired to their computers, where highly sensitive programs and data is stored.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    SMS uses cellular, WhatsApp uses internet.

    I think that's why OP asked about RCS as well, which is also internet but built into SMS apps.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Signal always sounded too good to be true. I won’t be shocked to learn it’s an NSA front I promise.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago

    Their clients are open source, unless you are worried about the NSA being better at decryption than is currently thought possible, the only information you are giving is encrypted traffic, who you are, who you sent a message to, and if their press release are anything to go by, they are trying to muddy the waters of the identification part with moving away from phone # account creation. I'm also a proponent of xmpp for a similar reason, and I think that xmpp is the better protocol, but signal has more concessions to non techies

  • source
  • parent