> freedom to connect with anyone who has a phone number
This is actually a bug, not a feature, as it enables all kind of robocalls and sms spam. That's why I love the iPhone feature that allows me to block all the calls from numbers not in my contact list. It does not allow this for SMS though...
It does allow it for SMS apparently, but the UI is easy to misunderstand. In the "Unknown & Spam" settings where you picked "Filter Unknown Senders" there is an option below it marked "SMS Filtering" and you need to set that to... "SMS Filter".
Even if it couldn't do this, that would just bolster the case that Apple is making SMS worse than it has to be on their platform to promote iMessage and its network effects.
EDIT: I booted up my iPhone 14 on the latest iOS and I guess this has changed? There isn't a "SMS Filtering" option near the Filter Unknown Senders option which has moved to the top level Messages settings page versus when the guide was written.
I'm not sure if that means it always filters SMS or it never does, but again if it doesn't filter SMS at all that's an Apple choice, it doesn't mean you can't do it on SMS.
This is actually a bug, not a feature, as it enables all kind of robocalls and sms spam. That's why I love the iPhone feature that allows me to block all the calls from numbers not in my contact list. It does not allow this for SMS though...