Are there any apps that support RCS that aren’t made by Google or a crappy cellular provider (ie: bloatware Verizon apps)?

I appreciate the features RCS has, but I’d love to get that without sending it all to Google with a “trust us” approach to backdoor keys. The documentation I looked at indicated that anyone could setup an app to support RCS and communicate with Google’s RCS users, but I can’t find any apps that actually do that.

Also would love to be able to message from multiple devices using RCS, which Google has working in their web app.

  • @AProfessional
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    121 year ago

    Signal is two things, a protocol to use over something else, and a proprietary service.

    Matrix is an example of a total solution.

    • MikelOP
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      41 year ago

      Signal is great, but it was unclear if I would be able to self-host my own Signal server if I wanted to support the public network and provide redundancy to my local LAN and connected networks.

      Every time I look at Matrix it looks really cool and sounds great. But each time I try to setup a client or actually use it, nothing works, apps crash, and I can’t actually use the dang thing. I tried setting up my own server, even tried using a public server with the Element web-app and still nothing worked, couldn’t join rooms, etc.

      Love the idea, haven’t seen a decent implementation yet. Honestly kinda wish there was PGP for sms or something like that. I couldn’t care less if the transport is insecure, as long as I can trust that only the intended recipient and myself can read/modify my messages.

      • umami_wasabi
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        1 year ago

        Signal is great, but it was unclear if I would be able to self-host my own Signal server if I wanted to support the public network and provide redundancy to my local LAN and connected networks.

        You can’t. Signal’s server is closed source. Only the clients are open.

        I just discovered Signal open source the server. Please kindly disregard what I said. I had the old news in my mind (maybe).

        • BananaTrifleViolin
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          81 year ago

          Signals server software is open source. I suspect you mean the main signal network is closed and centrally controlled (it’s not federated basically) - anyone can run a private signal server (and network) but not as a node within the main signal network is my understanding.

          • Chewy
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            1 year ago

            Maybe they meant that at some point a few years ago Signal didn’t update their public open source server code for neraly a year or so while simultaneously rolling out new features.

        • MikelOP
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          01 year ago

          I thought it was something like that. What I really want to see is an open-source version of Briar.

            • MikelOP
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              21 year ago

              I just checked and you’re right! I looked into Briar a while ago and ignored it because I couldn’t run the Briar-Mailbox program on Linux.

              • @AbidanYre
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                11 year ago

                I don’t think it runs on iOS yet either, which may limit who you can contact with it.

                • MikelOP
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                  11 year ago

                  I have an off-grid Linux box that hosts a local Wi-Fi network and some communication and entertainment apps. I want to host a chat service for asynchronous off-grid comms. Briar looked like the perfect option if I could just add the mail-box to my Linux box.

                  Simplex looks like it might do something similar, but it doesn’t look like it does comms over direct Bluetooth.

                  • @AbidanYre
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                    1 year ago

                    It doesn’t. But you can run your own server pretty easily.

                    You could also check out Jami. It doesn’t do direct Bluetooth but it works on a lan if you run your own dht… proxy? bootstrap server? It can also do local discovery over udp, but I haven’t tried that yet. I think async may chew up battery though

                    Maybe your own matrix server?

        • @mashbooq
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          01 year ago

          To add to what others have said, Signal’s server code is open source, but they took the anti-spam module closed source last year

    • @Lime66
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      21 year ago

      Matrix doesn’t have forward secrecy, and signal is not proprietary, it’s free and open source,

      • setVeryLoud(true);
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        01 year ago

        And Matrix does not fall back to SMS (unless someone implements such a Matrix client).

        It would also be silly to try to get everyone you know to use YOUR Matrix client, or one compatible with it.