You’re right, they are pronounced the same. What I was actually thinking about was the different pronunciations of the vowel before the ss/ß. In the word “Schoß” for example the ß tells you the the vowel is long and not short as it would be in the word “schoss”.

So what I’m trying to say is that s/ss/ß have distinct use cases which follow consistent rules.

The vowel preceding ß is pronounced long, the vowel preceding ss is pronounced short (with exceptions, of course).