I just want working RCS messaging

Where RCS Fails and Who’s Responsible

• Many see the core problem as an accountability vacuum between three parties:
  • Apple insists activation is a carrier issue.
  • Carriers often outsource RCS to Google’s Jibe platform and tell users “it’s Google.”
  • Jibe is opaque to both customers and front-line support, so nobody can actually fix edge‑case failures.
• Some argue it’s purely the carrier’s job (Jibe should behave like any other carrier backend), others think Apple could avoid this by running its own RCS servers but deliberately won’t.

Reliability, Activation, and Spam

• Numerous reports of RCS:
  • Failing to activate or only working on certain SIMs, devices, or networks.
  • Toggling unpredictably between RCS and SMS.
  • Breaking group chats, especially when participants switch between Android and iOS.
  • Stalling on weak data instead of falling back cleanly to SMS, leading some to disable it permanently.
• Several users describe severe RCS spam and “random group” scams, though others say their spam is overwhelmingly SMS/MMS, not RCS.

Platform / ROM and Carrier Interactions

• Custom ROM users (GrapheneOS, LineageOS) report long‑running breakage:
  • Google Messages expects special permissions, Play Services, and attestation; without them, number verification or Jibe activation fails.
  • Some implementations appear tied to IMEI/IMSI, so moving numbers between phones or eSIM resets can create mysterious lockouts.
• MVNOs and smaller carriers often lag in iOS RCS rollout or have partial implementations.

RCS, Google Jibe, and “Google-only” Reality

• On paper, RCS is a GSMA standard carriers can self‑host.
• In practice, for most major markets:
  • Carriers have abandoned or never deployed their own stacks and rely on Jibe.
  • Google Messages is effectively the only mainstream client.
  • Many commenters therefore consider RCS a de facto Google service, not a true, carrier‑neutral successor to SMS.

Security, Privacy, and Protocol Design

• RCS originally shipped without E2EE; standardized MLS-based encryption only appeared in recent spec revisions and is barely deployed.
• This fuels views of RCS as surveillance‑ and telco‑friendly, with cleartext metadata and easy spamability.
• Others note it’s still an incremental improvement over SMS/MMS, but far behind Signal/WhatsApp in practice.
• Tying identity to phone numbers and carrier infrastructure is seen by many as a fundamental privacy and design flaw.

Social Dynamics: iMessage, Kids, and Exclusion

• Thread veers into US social effects:
  • iMessage dominance makes Android users and their “green bubbles” socially excluded in some teen groups.
  • Debate whether iMessage’s rich group‑chat UX directly amplifies bullying, or just hosts behavior that would exist on any platform.
  • Some parents deliberately keep kids on Android (or off smartphones) to avoid iMessage drama; others argue that withholding iPhones harms kids’ ability to participate socially.

“Why Not Just Use X?” – Competing Apps and Regions

• Non‑US commenters say RCS is mostly irrelevant where WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Line, or local apps dominate.
• Others point out:
  • Network effects and older relatives mean “just use Signal/WhatsApp” is not always realistic.
  • Many dislike letting carriers control messaging at all and prefer pure IP, app‑layer solutions or federated systems (email/XMPP/Matrix).
• There’s frustration that after decades, no open, widely adopted, secure, interoperable messaging standard has replaced SMS.

Meta‑Critique of RCS and Telco‑Driven Standards

• RCS is frequently described as:
  • Design‑by‑committee bloat (“email over HTTP/SIP/XML wrapped in carrier cruft”).
  • A relic of the era when carriers controlled phone software and imagined users would install carrier‑branded messaging apps.
• Several conclude that giving telcos any role beyond “dumb pipe” has doomed RCS to the same fate as MMS: complex, fragile, and unevenly implemented, while closed consumer apps continue to “just work.”