Has there been meaningful innovation in messaging? I had free AIM on $3 T-Zones in 2006. So I see no downsides to just forcing interoperability.

Meta and Apple are paying for far more bandwidth than what AIM was moving around back then. Very high quality videos, audio, pictures, and gifs not to mention files and group video calls.

Their will. I'm perfectly fine receiving full quality media as files, I don't need meta to reformat my media to reduce their bandwidth bill and train their model, they could redirect me to the original file if I am using another messaging app.

Many add a bunch of bloat that I simply do not want. It'd be nice to have a chat app that only do chat.

> you aren’t truly free to choose which app you download. You have to use the one

Singular? You'd just use whichever app a given person is on (everyone here has 3+ chat apps installed). Wouldn't network effects only kick in when group chats are involved?

Yes, and failing that, you could simply revert to plain old SMS. IMO, a better course of action would have been forcing Whatsapp to provide an alternative way to access their group chats.

Or alternatively, forcing all phones and carriers to support RCS as a condition for certification, and funding the development of a quality FOSS RCS client.