SMS is the most basic and ancient of mobile phone technologies. SMS apps were always freely included. It just sends text messages, and that's it. Can't be simpler, right? Somehow today, all SMS apps seem to be thoroughly enshittified.

The SMS app that came standard on my Fairphone 5 worked fine for a while, until it suddenly wanted to connect with my Google account. Why does SMS need my Google account? And it refused to show me my messages without it. So I delete it and install Chomp SMS. Can't get more basic than that, right? But today, Chomp suddenly asked for my permission to share cookies with a couple of hundred of their "partners". And there was no option to refuse. So I google for ad-free open source SMS apps, and find Pulse. I want to install it, and despite the web listing it as ad-free, Google app store says it contains ads.

What's going on?

#enshittification #sms #android