is not rcs simply another locked down standard under the thumb of google, which they have decided to limit and block on rooted devices in the past?

correct me if im wrong ? but this all seems like a freight train of no good barelling in. google propoganda has won out and we’re swapping one gatekept standard for another.

Can confirm they block rooted Android users intentionally, completely silently, at least when using Google’s RCS servers. The message just doesn’t send and is automatically deemed spam if you don’t pass PlayIntegrity. And the only RCS capable app is Google’s Messages, third party apps can only access SMS and MMS functionnality.

So yeah, fuck RCS really. I was completely on board with RCS until that. Apple was right on that one. It won’t fix messaging, it just puts it in Google’s hands unless carriers finally decide to roll out real RCS instead of relying on Google to provide it.

Third party apps had that resolved a decade ago, and Signal is just plain better.