Is iMessage already falling behind?
Apple’s game-changing new iPhone update is now just a few weeks away. And while iOS 18.2 is all about Apple Intelligence, it also hugely improves the security and privacy around photo sharing, and—in a surprise move—will enable users to change their default messaging, phone and other apps.
This comes just a few months after Apple’s u-turn on RCS, which has gone live within iMessage, albeit it’s still carrier and geography dependent. But there’s a huge issue with RCS, one that’s about to get much worse, and while Google has revealed a new update to fix this on Android, it’s critical that Apple does the same.
We’re talking spam, unsolicited “RCS Business Messaging.” Dress it up any way you want, this is partly driven by spam messages pushed out to billions of devices. it’s such a serious problem, that Google started addressing it before iPhone jumped onboard. But that’s not enough. Juniper Research forecasts “that RCS business messaging traffic will reach 50 billion messages globally in 2025; Apple’s first full year of support for the technology—single-year growth from 33 billion in 2024.”
The numbers are staggering. One leading platform providing RCS Business Messaging has just announced that “it has crossed 10 billion RCS messages globally, on its platform in 2024, marking a 5x growth as compared to 2023,” adding that this “highlights the growing adoption of RCS as a preferred messaging platform for enterprises globally, particularly in markets like India, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Africa, where the technology has seen exponential growth over the last year.”
Not all of this is spam, of course, but while “RCS is a great feature for the most part,” says Android Authority, “it also comes with some annoyances. In certain regions, ‘verified’ businesses have been using RCS to spam users with unsolicited advertisements. The RCS ad spam issue on Google Messages was very annoying once upon a time, and while the frequency is lower these days, it’s still a problem.”
“Stop,” says Google revealing new feature
Well now it seems that Google is about to launch a solution for Android users that will add one-click simplicity to RCS messaging opt-outs, albeit one sender at a time. As discovered by Android Authority in one of its APK teardowns, “Google Messages is testing a new ‘STOP’ button to unsubscribe from RCS Business Messages, which users recognize as ads sent through RCS. The feature aims to simplify the process of opting out of unwanted RCS communications.”
While users can already just reply STOP to do the same, there’s a big psychological difference between sending a text and tapping a button in an app. This will make it much easier and more likely for users to turn down the deluge of spam. “This will make it significantly easier to manage the incessant business ads that users in some regions regularly receive when they activate RCS.”
Apple provides various protections against such spam messaging already. Users can filter unknown senders, report messages as junk, block those senders, and there’s also a new toggle to disable RCS business messaging, albeit that requires enabling by a carrier and won’t be available for all users.
It would be great to see a similar one-click option for iMessage, albeit most iPhone users outside the US already use over-the-top platforms like WhatsApp more than iMessage anyway. Partly because iMessage is a honeypot for spam, business notifications and OTPs and doesn’t have the natural cleanliness of other platforms—most of our WhatsApps (or similar) come from friends and family.
Android users should make use of this option when available. And iPhone users should use what’s there today ahead of any future updates that may or may not come. RCS also suffers from a lack of end-to-end security cross-platform, combined with this spam issue, it is not the compelling offering Google and others want it to be.