I have always been curious about this. Did you get them to use other services or did they stubbornly refuse and you just accepted it? I am talking using Chrome, using Windows, using social media like Tiktok or Facebook or Instagram, etc. Bonus points if you have kids because that is even more work in the privacy realm
“I will answer it unlike…”
That’s not making things easier, that’s just forcing people to adapt to your niche choices or not be able to communicate with you.
At the time I was changing to signal, I only had google messages on my desktop, so I would answer accumulated messages at home.
There was no cell service at work so SMS didn’t work, but I could use wifi.
In modern times, we have RCS so it’s kind of not really a problem anymore, but everyone I know uses signal now anyways.
I didn’t make it hard, I got Telegram and Matrix and met people halfway where I could. But naturally everyone I know just settled on signal since it also did SMS so it replaced an app rather than added one. Plus id didn’t feel like a “sign up” since it just worked. Those days are gone but the network effect is already chugging along.
And that’s materially different from having to join Discord/Teams/Facebook because that’s where someone you need to speak with communicates with how?
SMS doesn’t require you to join any specific service except the phone service you’re already paying for.
And OP was talking about not answering ‘google chat’. Calling that SMS is comparing apples to potatoes.
Yes, this is correct.
I could not have used SMS for most of the day since I worked on the top floor of a multi-level basement. I had wifi and a VPN though.
At the time I moved to signal, Google Message, or chat or whatever was being replaced with Allo and Duo and everyone was pretty un-jazzed about the whole thing.
Sure, but OP and the people they want to connect with don’t have to force their choice of proprietary app into others when there’s a universal solution that works for all phones.
Yeah I’m not super happy with Signal’s level of openness, but I also wouldn’t call it proprietary. It is open source and I could run my own server if I really wanted to, but that would just make it harder.
At the time we were moving from a walled garden to one of 3 encrypted OSS solutions, and I had all of them until we naturally coalesced on one.
SMS at the time didn’t work due to not having cell service, and while we “have” RCS now to solve that issue, I don’t know anyone who uses it.