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Google is silently blocking RCS messages on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs
(www.androidauthority.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Probably for "security reasons"
No, they want people part of their ecosystem (play services) so they can spy on you better. And incase ya forgot RCS could be a potential attack vector as it is more code that can possibly be used for nefarious actors.
MMS can be easily be used this way because of auto retrieval of pictures that have been modified with code that auto runs once downloaded and opened by the messaging app.
On older Android devices vulnerable to Stagefright, malicious code will auto-run as soon as the MMS picture preview is loaded by the system notification shade, if I'm not mistaken