this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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I figured out how to get around the iPhone green bubble /blue bubble (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

An android messaging app that sends everything as an image where the text is in a blue bubble. All images, baby.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The thing is... The bubble colors do matter. But people aren't caring about the colors for the right reasons.

The color matters because the color has to do with the security of that message.

Sending a message through the iMessage protocol is more secure than SMS/MMS.

People should care that their messages are secure and private (and they do). Unfortunately, the people behind the whole blue vs. green bubble culture war don't seem to focus on this security aspect, which is actually what/why it matters.

As an Apple investor who would benefit from more iPhone sales, "Buy an iPhone" is not the right response/solution to this problem, despite what Tim Apple says.

Choose open source. Say no to walled gardens.

Use—and donate to—Signal.

Greetings from GrapheneOS, as a former iOS and stock Android user.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So you're saying if the Android messaging app were to suddenly change its security overnight, the bubble colors would change by default?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Nope. I suppose in theory it could, but not necessarily—it'd be up to Apple/Google to make the color decisions regarding that.

The important thing here is that it's not about the colors themselves, but about what the colors signify.

Apple chose blue to denote that the message you're sending is to another Apple device. By default, this Apple-to-Apple message uses the iMessage protocol. If it uses iMessage, then that implies a certain security standard.

Apple also made the deliberate choice to denote non-iMessage texts with green. If it's green, then it's SMS/MMS, you lose iMessage encryption, and other features like reactions.

The colors are not gonna change by default—it's up to them to coordinate what colors are used for what. Apple's not gonna open up iMessage (at least not voluntarily, and we saw how far they'll go with Beeper), so Google can't do anything about that. Which is also why they're pushing so hard to get Apple to adopt RCS.

If Apple does adopt RCS, maybe they'll denote it with purple bubbles, who knows. Then you'd have iMessage as blue, RCS as purple, and SMS/MMS as green.

But again, this is all about what each color signifies in terms of privacy and security.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Fucking WHHHHHHYYYYYY? WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT BUBBLE COLORS?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

But that's not why they care

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Make the colour configurable as I can see myself wanting to send orange, yellow, pink etc and maybe black texts

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Brilliant!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I clicked figuring it was not giving a fuck.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

oh my god, this (basically culture war) is so hard to witness as a european.

just use signal for god's sake.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I hope sliding-sync is merged soon, so it is usable enough that I can invite my friends to our matrix server

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Sliding Sync does work fully for me on my Synapse server with Element X clients, it just doesn't support the "regular" version of Element/Element Desktop (yet?) as far as I know.

Quite nice too!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Signal sucks, a lot. Try using their "privacy first" service with a VPN. You literally need so solve a captcha on every new chat you start.

There is no official FOSS client. You can use Twinhelix' Signal-FOSS which works great. I recommend using Molly though, which has more needed features like linking multiple mobile devices (for example using an Android Tablet and a phone, with the full version instead of the uncapable Desktop version).

Signal is still based on phone numbers, which is its biggest strength. But it is a centralized Service, nobody runs a Signal server (apart of the country servers from Signal themselves).

Try SimpleX. It is really great and now has like eveything you need. It is completely anonymous, but can also be different. It gives the users a lot of control, which may not be wanted and confuse people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I have gotten my friend group to switch to using Signal for our group chat. It was pretty hard because I'm the only Android user but I ended up convincing them

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The culture war is v stupid, yes. But "use signal" is the same as "dont text your friend with a different app at all" with signal dropping sms. They are in a different position that google and apple, so not saying i blame them for dropping, but i did stop using it once it become "another app" instead of how i text.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

You should not use SMS for anything. If they actually supported encrypting SMS, it may have had a sense for situationd with no internet.

But SMS is so incredibly insecure and unprivate, that they didnt want to mix it in with their secure messenger.

Having an app also being an SMS app makes no sense as you shouldnt use SMS. But I like Deku SMS which allows encrypting SMS.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

good luck sending images over sms

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They're mms

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

And Apple said they are finally going to support RCS.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Now you’d be the person that sends your text messages as 20x20 pixelated images!