de0u I think the referenced tweet is now one month old.
Yes, but that was already three months after the current RCS problems started. There have been no updates since then. And they were saying at that time that fixing this issue is not a priority. What's more, before that tweet, there was a point in the first month of the issues that they said (I think it was the moderator here) that it is a priority. So they've gone from is a priority to not a priority. That's not a promising direction. I think it's wishful thinking to imagine that after three months they shifted positions to post to say it's not a priority and then immediately started working on it.
de0u Many GrapheneOS users do not live in the U.S., and it seems that RCS does work for some U.S. users (and other U.S. users never started using RCS). So it may be true that RCS is not working for many U.S. users but may simultaneously be true that most GrapheneOS users are not affected.
It would be interesting to see numbers on this. My sense from reading the forums and in reddit and elsewhere is that the vast majority of users are in North America. But really, neither of us know. In any case, the point is that RCS is mostly used in the U.S. right now. As far as I know, the U.S. is the only place where every mobile carrier supports RCS. So saying that RCS "only" affects people in the U.S. is a bit like saying heart disease only affects people with hearts. Right now, it's like the U.S. is the canary in the coal mine for the bad experience Graphene users elsewhere are going to have, once it rolls out more.
de0u Personally I am very confident that they understand that switching from RCS back to SMS/MMS is slow and painful and that it breaks existing group message threads. I also believe that they are aware of forum posts about users switching back to Google's stock OS.
I'm not sure what basis you could possible have for your confidence. I have not once seen the devs here or on github or elsewhere acknowledge that RCS with group messages and iPhone users breaks group messages when RCS fails, because you cannot fall back to MMS group messages (and I've read every post in this thread since September--about a thousand).
Regarding users switching back to stock, someone mentioned this on the Github issue for this problem and the devs response was that Graphene users numbers are going up, not down. That did not sound like someone who thought there was a problem with people switching back to stock because RCS broke their group messages and there was no solution possible while using Graphene. It sounded like someone who thought there was no problem.
de0u That might happen. Or maybe in February the problem with RCS on T-Mobile might be fixed, and then perhaps in March AT&T might be fixed. Or maybe some different pattern will happen.
Again, this seems like wishful thinking. So far the problems have been spreading to more carriers. Also the "problem" was caused because T-Mobile and now AT&T are more up to date on how Google wants RCS to work. Verizon is lagging. So it will probably spread to Verizon at some point too. Meanwhile, the last message we had was that this is not a priority and the Github issue is marked as a feature request. My experience is with open source projects and feature requests is that they can languish for a very long time.
de0u I am not an RCS user, but I have a sense that RCS on Verizon was fixed. If that is accurate then I think perhaps the "not proactive" claim may not be accurate.
Overall, I think the RCS situation is legitimately bad, for many users, even if there are also many users for whom it is working fine or for whom it is completely irrelevant. And I believe the GrapheneOS developers know the situation is legitimately bad for many users, that they spent time and effort to fix it for some users, and that they hope to fix it for other users.
The fix for Verizon was not specific to Verizon. Initially in September Google Messages had several changes. Fixing one of them did not require going against Graphene's security priorities. At the time, that fixed RCS mostly for Verizon users and AT&T users, but it did not address the privileged permissions issue that affected T-Mobile and now also affects AT&T. So that fix had nothing to do with helping Verizon users in particular. They basically fixed the easy thing and not the hard thing. That happened to be good for people on Verzion, at least until Verizon catches up with T-Mobile and AT&T. Once the problem with T-Mobile was known and it was known that this is the direction Google is pushing carriers to go, which was months ago, doing nothing and then having AT&T recently end up in the same boat is definitely not proactive.
I really think it is inaccurate to say RCS is bad for many users and fine for many, as if there is some parity. Again, the U.S. is the only country where all of the carriers have enabled RCS. So it is the only place where conceivably everyone could be switching over to RCS from SMS. But two of the three major carriers have made changes that breaks RCS on Graphene. So that means two thirds of the population, in the one place where RCS has been rolled out on all carriers, cannot use RCS on Graphene. Effectively, since RCS is mainly a US thing right now, that means that the vast majority of people who could theoritically use RCS on Graphene, can't because Graphene breaks it.
So again, if these issues are not fixed, I think the experience with RCS on Graphene is the US is just the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world and people on carriers like Verizon who have not updated their systems. There will be many more people who naively enable RCS only to have it break with carrier changes and then discover they can't go back so SMS/MMS, because that breaks group messages with many people in a manner that de facto can't really be undone.
Honestly, I really wouldn't think there was a big problem at all, if you could just disable RCS and go back to SMS/MMS. I wish I could do that. But because of the group message issue, I'm stuck. Meanwhile people argue over who to point the finger at Google or Graphene. But it doesn't matter whose fault it is. The reality is that RCS works as it is supposed to on stock Android. It breaks on Graphene, because of how Graphene is designed. Only the Graphene devs can solve this. Maybe that's unfair, but that's reality.