this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Why should they be forced to interop? That'll just reduce it to the lowest commend denominator. What impetus would any of them have for investing in making a better system if everyone can use their work?
We have choices. We don't have to use iMessage, or Beeper. We can use other messengers.
Forcing interop means all messengers will function the same... Again at the LCD level.
Plus different messengers have different capabilities, different use-cases.
Frankly I don't even want to use SMS at all, and haven't wanted to for 10 years. I want a messenger that's independent of my mobile device that I can simply sign into just about anywhere. Kind of like instant messengers were in the late 90's (which often used things like XMPP).
Ten+ years ago I was running instant messengers on Android. Pidgin, Trillian, etc, logging in to multiple messengers. That should've been the path forward, but people couldn't be bothered because SMS was free, native, and "good enough" (in their minds).
And yet back then any conversations I had on any device showed up on all devices. With no dependence on my SIM or phone hardware ID.
>"Interop bad"
>using lemmy
interoperability is the capability of a product or system to interact and function with others. Why would that force them to all function the same? Why would that be bad for us as consumers? Why does it matter how many choices we have if those choices restrict us to using a specific one? Interoperability solves all of these and causes none of the problems you are stating. Of course they have no incentive for doing this as it doesn't benefit a corporation, they're only incentivized to entrap people in their ecosystems cause it makes them the most money. Different messaging standards is one of the ways they keep us locked in. This is a choice, too, one made by the tech giants for you with no choice in the matter. You can't send a nice quality picture from iMessage to Google Messages, get fukt.
How else do you make them interop, other than by finding a common mapping?
Why would any company map their extended or unique elements, which they developed, to meet government regs?
They won't, they'll drop to the least effort required to get the regulators off their backs.
I have a choice. Apple users have a choice. There are plenty of other messenging systems out there.
MS Teams
Skype
Element
SimpleX
Signal
Telegram
Wire
Wiremin
Litewire
Discord
Conversations
Snikket
Briar
Zello
TwinMe
Tox
Keybase
Threema
Whatsapp
Jami
XMPP (which some listed use)
Just go to Wikipedia for a long list of different messengers and their capabilities.
Choice is nice, but my problem is the choices can't communicate with each other correctly. Thats an issue. Its an issue when our communication devices are not effective at communicating what we want to. We are already seeing the bare ass minimum right now, which is just SMS. They're doing that now, the bare minimum. If Apple was forced to fix their shitty conversion instead of it just picking the worst resolution possible, they would do it. It doesn't matter what app I use because most people in the US use iMessage, and thats where I do most of my communicating.