Google and carriers deployed changes to RCS which have been breaking it for many users on the stock OS including with certain carriers and in whole countries. The changes appear to have specifically impacted GrapheneOS users too. It’s not related to our September 8th update. We’re working on it.
You can find many recent threads about people having issues with RCS in Google Messages while using a stock OS with Google Mobile Services. There are articles about how some carriers and countries no longer have it. It still works for most people but the changes definitely regressed compatibility.
GrapheneOS users were impacted by these recent changes much more than other users. We don’t know why yet but we’re working on determining that and restoring compatibility with Google Messages for people who use it. We’ll try to get compatibility with the new way it functions implemented very soon.
Even if there is one, everyone else would use Google’s and they’d have all your metadata anyway.
Nothing is perfect here, but I think federation would be best. The concern is the same one that caused Signal to drop SMS support (to my knowledge), that people might improperly trust the services that their anonymous service are federated to. Especially when you’re federated to a chat service that is run by a company that also handles the synchronization of it’s users contacts with their names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
But still, in a sane world, federation of services should be the goal.
I mean yeah, that would be best. Just not in any meaningful way.