nope I fully understand it. completely. and when they removed it, they removed my need for their app. as suddenly I went from being able to message everyone, to being able to message just 2 people.
it no longer fits my needs. so it isn't used by me or by both of the people that were leftover after the sms turn off. as they had the same reaction I did.
so that's that, I suppose.
weirdly my first thought just now was "wouldn't it be cool if we could federate this somehow". have a single (or a handful) of secure communication protocol(s) so that users could just choose the app with the UI they liked best and be done with it.
...then I realized I just essentially invented matrix and that already exists. lol. but yeah the issue is getting everyone to the same place.
its impossible to get some people to move from a platform they've used for over a decade in most cases.