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Nov 18 2023

Thoughts on Apple Adding RCS Support

Last Edit: Nov 18 2023

Photo by Adem AY on Unsplash

We, the users are the problem, not RCS.

Let me explain.

Apple announced that the Messages app would begin support for RCS in 2024.

I've noticed that a lot of users (particularly those from North America) are looking forward to this change.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against RCS and it is in everybody's interests for Apple to begin supporting RCS, but I can't help noticing that RCS might not be such a big deal.

Some proponents of RCS pushed for its adoption for its features:

• Reactions
• High-resolution photos/videos
• Read receipts
• Location sharing (actually really important!!)

Others hoped that the closer feature parity with iMessage (is it still called that?) would reduce the stigma surrounding "green bubbles".

Sidenote: the fact that "green bubble" users are discriminated against purely for their choice of phone is entirely due to the effectiveness of Apple's marketing and position as a "luxury" brand. (Their prices are definitely there) and simultaneously making phones running Android look like the "poor" option (not true, but that's where the marketing went)

Their hopes were quickly dashed when Apple confirmed RCS users would not be getting blue bubbles.

I'm not really sure what they were trying to get at anyways - stigma against Android users is because they are Android users and not because of the colour of the bubble. People (admittedly, mostly teenagers) are just going to find something else to bag the Android users for. The colour was just an obvious thing we could point to, to explain the prejudice/bullying.

This issue is a reflection of society (it always is), and not the technical shortcomings of SMS, MMS and now, RCS. This fixes almost nothing - the only way we could concieveably prevent something like this from happening again is to teach children (and maybe some adults now based on how pervasive this messaging is) that it is not okay to judge other people based on their material posessions. But I digress - moral discussions are probably well out of my level of expertise :P

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This issue is almost entirely centred around North America as well. In most parts of the world, other messaging platforms have dominant marketshare (WhatsApp). The kids of today (i have no better word for it) also use platforms less tied to carriers and phone numbers, (you know, Discord?).

I feel like social groups shouldn't have depended on SMS/MMS for so long, and that maybe a mass exodus to other messaging platforms in the US at some point a couple of years ago would have completely invalidated the problem of RCS support.