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Comment by dingaling | Hacker News Reader

> that means no entire market reach

Globally iOS is about 15% to 20% max. So the onus would be on Apple to integrate RCS into iMessage in order to reach the majority of the market.

I can't see RCS succeeding anyway but it won't be because of Apple. It'll be because it took 11 years to come to market and even my dentist uses WhatsApp now.

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Onus? Like there are rules? Or moral obligations on the part of multinationals?

Apple's only responsibility is to itself, and its shareholders.

Yes, there is a moral obligation to do the right thing.

Also, ethics provides specific practices and actions that we can take in order to ‘do the right thing’.

The fact that some corporations act ruthlessly and mercenary with regards to human rights and individual suffering (like Facebook in the recent data scandal), does not abrogate our collective and individual obligation to a higher ethical practice.

How would one determine what such an obligation is any more than one would determine a religious obligation to do the right thing? As much as we wish there was, and as much as we think society would be better if there was, I don't think they exist and the closest thing to them we can emulate, that of a social obligation, has a number of flaws (since social obligations are enforced by social backlash and advertising strongly influences social backlash, and social backlash can often be counter productive).

Wow. You seem to be arguing that because it might be hard to construct an ethical and moral framework that works for society, we should all give up and just default to being purely self interested sociopaths? Yes, building a justice system, laws, social norms and culture is hard. That's why civilization has been working on it for thousands of years, and we are still figuring it out. Multinational corporations are comparatively new, so we don't know how to treat them as well as you know how to treat your next door neighbor or in laws. That doesn't mean we should give up on figuring it out.

>You seem to be arguing that because it might be hard to construct an ethical and moral framework that works for society, we should all give up and just default to being purely self interested sociopaths?

I'm arguing that any such constructed framework is merely fiction. Only what we actually enforce matters, but that there is a distinction between a moral obligation enforced by some concept of being moral or immoral and social obligations enforced by social reaction. I then point out that social obligations are flawed (not that we shouldn't use them, but we should be aware of their flaw).

>Yes, building a justice system, laws, social norms and culture is hard.

And these are different than moral obligations. Laws are enforced by the state. Social norms and culture are enforced by different social reactions, anything from 'tut tutting' and social disapproval to outright violence.

>That doesn't mean we should give up on figuring it out.

I'm not saying we should give up. I'm saying that trying to use moral obligations as the tool is no more useful than using religious obligations are (outside of a theocracy, though in that case religious and legal obligations co-mingle). I'm saying we should use social and legal obligations instead.

Social and legal obligations often originate from ethical frameworks. For example, human rights were initially a purely ethical concept which most white people at that time thought to be ridiculous. And now it is a social and legal obligation in all Western countries to treat every human equally, regardless of skin color or religion.

So by abandoning ethics you are actually cutting off a source for improvements of our social and legal norms.

I'd also would like to point out that it doesn't follow from being constructed that something is 'merely fiction'. Everything in humanities is constructed (and some would even argue that everything in science is constructed). The question is: does it impact our lives? And ethical reasoning obviously does it.

Who says it's right or wrong for x to be integrated into your product? Should they do it if it compromises iMessage encryption? It's not as if there are no WhatsApps/Telegrams etc people can use as an alternative if they don't like the options.

Implementing arbitrary standards is not "the right thing". Especially failed standards such as RCS.

Switching to RCS from iMessage would facilitate more warantless wiretapping, and make it easier for carriers to rent seek by charging per message.

It would also probably regress iOS Apple’s customers have already paid money for.

How is any of that morally “the right thing”?

RCS wouldn't replace iMessage, it would be a new layer of fallback between iMessage and the current MMS/SMS fallback, so the security situation wouldn't change.

RCS uses your data plan[0], so it's unlikely carriers will bother charging per message. I already have unlimited international SMS and MMS on my plan anyway. Charging per message on RCS would just mean the protocol would fail and push people to the multitude of other options.

[0]https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-m...

What the right thing is depends on who you ask.

Yes, there are likely to be contract terms requiring anything with a connection to support RCS.

This will be driven by carriers turning off legacy SMS and MMS servers the same way they turned off 2G GSM.

MMS was already discontinued a few years ago. SMS still has some relevancy for business.

It was? Or do you mean specifically 2G-transported MMS messages? I have flip-phone-using family that still MMS me pictures.

> MMS was already discontinued a few years ago.

Where? In Canada I use MMS every day.

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