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Comment by jamescostian | Hacker News Reader

I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either.

In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" - of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.

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Honestly this seems like a feature of the social circles involved. I can't really imagine being, or even wanting to be, around people who are so shallow they won't have someone in a group because they can't change the chat name, or at least, people who wouldn't be willing to move to other types of software to accomodate people in the group. It seems like basic human decency that when someone in the group says "I can't xyz" you go "ok what can we do instead?". I'm not sure I can imagine caring so little about other people, and I definitely do not want to be around people who don't.

It’s often not malice or conscious choice as you seem to think. It’s that technical designs have effects on social dynamics. Here’s an example I wrote elsewhere:

> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.

But how difficult is it to move to whatsapp or something that everyone has supported, and most likely has on their phone anyway?

Americans do not have WhatsApp on their phones.

[citation needed]

I know americans that use it, and south africans, and elsewhere.

The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reaction)…people just don't want to deal with it. And yes, iMessage makes no effort to destigmatize the person who converts your iMessage chat into an SMS conversation.

You can use Whatsapp or other IMs though, which is what the rest of the world is doing. No one really uses SMS anymore

People do absolutely use SMS.

In the US, sure. In the rest of the world SMS is solely for human-machine communication - mostly one-time login codes.

Exactly. I'm in EU, can't remember last time I used SMS. iMessage and Telegram, however, daily.

Can confirm. The only SMS I ever receive is from bots (mostly OTP codes). I can't remember the last time I received an SMS from a human.

But people can just use LINE, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, messenger, etc and get all the features and more which in my experience as an android user is what actually happens than this weird shallow world of green and blue bubbles I've heard about on the internet.

Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using, which is almost never plain sms/imessage.

Google voice/sms is almost always for one on one friends where we don't share anyone in common or older relatives.

As has been mentioned many times in the other comments, those force you to download something, perhaps make an account, make sure everyone has it…whereas 90% of the people might already have an iPhone, which might be better than the number for anything else.

I'd argue that that is irrelevant. What's the point in having anything other than a flip phone if you refuse to download apps. It's not a barrier to entry in every other case and it's never been a barrier to entry with my friends.

Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years.

I know a lot of friends who use WeChat to avoid things like international texting rates, but Americans talking to Americans generally do not need this.

> Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone?

Having a blue circle is not the basic functionality of texting. People here are talking about fancy facetime stuff, like group names, and reactions.

Those are all part of iMessage.

Thank you for making my point. iMessage is not texting. I'm responding to this.

"Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years."

> Thank you for making my point. iMessage is not texting. I'm responding to this.

To your average iOS user they are one and the same, which is why US iPhone users don't generally download secondary chatting apps unless they have to.

I don't actually think this is true. Is there any verification that most iOS users do not have a single one of the most popular messaging apps in the world?

I never said they don't have anything but if you ask someone to download an app specifically to contact you they're going to be very bothered by it. It's like how as streaming services proliferate there are only so many services people actually want to subscribe to, or how pre-unlimited calling people were very judicious about calling people not on their network.

Anecdotally, in my social group:

- Snap: withering on the vine.

- Messenger: generally declining with the declining popularity of Facebook in my age cohort

- Instagram: everyone has it, but messaging is definitely a second class part of the app and no one really uses it other than to send instagram memes

- GroupMe: I downloaded it once for one person, most of the people in the chat have iPhones anyways, and people don't really use it other than to contact the non-Apple users specifically.

Well, here's an anecdote for you. I am a US iPhone user and I use zero third party messaging apps. I know of no one in my friend circle who has an iPhone and uses a third party messaging app.

> 90% of the people might already have an iPhone

85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]

The whole point is to be about your social circle. If 90% of my social circle is on iPhone, they're on iMessage.

What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle.

I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bubble telling me about the hundreds of messages I'm trying to not react to in real time when I'm busy.

If you tap on the info button in Messages, you can click "Hide Alerts", which works fine for me.

That doesn't stop the red counter bubble from appearing and incrementing on the messages app, sadly.

Whereas a muted group chat in whatsapp is completely muted, unless someone explicitly @tags you in a message or explicitly replies to your message (another feature iMessage group chats lacks - tagging specific people, and explicit/contextual replies to specific messages)

Swipe a conversation in Messages and tap Hide Alerts.

But it is precisely my social circle that matters when choosing a messaging platform.

> 85%+ of the world's on Android

I'm assuming the majority seems to be third-world countries because in big UK cities the majority of the phones I see around are iPhones.

The UK seems to be about 50% iOS.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271240/android-market-sh...

And yet everybody seems to use WhatsApp even between iOS devices

And people do. At least in Europe.

Blame Google for never getting messaging right and having multiple chat apps at the sane time.

I’m buying my parents an iPad just because every other type video chat is more convoluted than just clicking on FaceTime from contacts.

Never understood this argument. My parents from a 3rd world country who barely understand English are able to use 3rd party apps like Whatsapp, Duo, Skype just fine. And Duo works directly from your contacts app too (at least in Pixel and Samsung phones), in fact you can see options like "Video call xxx Message XXX with a logo of the apps that support it right in the contacts apps.

And then that’s another thing they have to sign into as opposed to just looking in their contacts and choosing the FaceTime icon.

And as far as Duo - only if you have a Samsung phone or Pixel? If you have to buy a new phone anyway - since the entire Android ecosystem is a clusterf* when it comes to upgrades - you might as well get one that is going to be supported for years.

Duo came out too late, and Google has a reputation for changing things. Years ago, I tried setting up my family with google’s apps, and they kept changing, and it burned me and wasted my time. So years ago, I switched everyone to Apple, and haven’t wasted any time since.

WhatsApp is really nice, but you need a phone for it, which some of the older grandparents don’t have. But they do have cheap iPads, so everyone uses FaceTime.

I find it astounding that the grandparents have iPads before phones. Most elderly people I know have cheapo Android phones or a few with "accessible" android phones target at people with sight or mobility problems (usually amounts to buttons and a skin with large icons). A few still have older Nokia phones, but these are the ones least likely to have iPads and more likely to have an old Windows 9x/XP computer hanging around for solitaire.

In my family, the grandparents live with their children and grandchildren sometimes, so they don't need phones (or at least only grandma or grandpa needs them, but not both).

But the younger set of grandparents all have their own phones, so it's only the very old that don't.

The iPads are usually bought by the adult children to replace the aging computers because they are both much simpler to use and much harder to screw up. I gave my parents an iPad and added them to my plan for $20/month unlimited data. They don’t have to worry about WiFi or anything.

> Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using

You made the point yourself here. If the messaging platform the group prefers is iMessage then it's somewhat awkward when someone new to the group refuses to use it. Have you ever tried to get a bunch of people to switch platforms for a single group chat? When most of the people have a working solution already it's practically impossible.

I've seen this exact behaviour with non-tech friends in 20s-30s people. You have it exactly right. There's a stigma to being a green bubble.

It's stupid, but whatever. If you're going to be my friend, first things first: no tech prejudice :-) Apple might be more willing to interop if it had less of a network effect. Hell, I'd sub to iMessage if I could get it on Android.

One of the most disappointing anecdotes I've read recently.

Wow. There’s been a lot going on lately?

Yeah my feeling is that there are a lot more important things going on than the color of chat bubbles (or the status/system it implies). Sorry if it came off as though I meant this is more important than other serious things going on.

edit: typo

If you're looking to be even more disappointed, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406844

High school senior here; I can second the prevalence of this experience starting in middle school.

Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah"

Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.

To be fair I am an iOS user and found the reactions an unnecessary and annoying gimmick.

It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.

I really like the "Liked" reaction after a former boss used it to signify "+1".

I've found that, in my social groups, "Liked" gets used as an acknowledgement for anything that doesn't require further discussion. Seems to clear up group chats of endless OKs back and forth, so I'm all for it.

Yup, exactly. I think that by itself makes it my most used reaction by an order of magnitude.

That, "ha ha", and "?" are probably about tied for my most used. I find that they are all useful ways to acknowledge or question something without cluttering chats.

It’s much easier to heart the thousandth photo of a fuzzy critter my sister has saved than to formulate a response. When it’s all iPhone users the chat is a lot cleaner too.

The android user would prefer Apple just didn’t communicate the reaction.

I don’t think it’s just Android users who see it. I’m on iPhone and in a group text with a mix of Android and iPhone users I see it that way too. Maybe I’m on the cusp of being old and cranky but it seems a silly thing to worry about.

Because it's a group MMS instead of a group iMessage, it falls back to sending those as messages instead of sending them as metadata.

I actually like the "so and so Loved blah", because otherwise it would be really easy for non-iphone users to not know that someone actually acknowledged their message.

I actually think just changing the content of the message could make this so much better. Change:

> Liked "XXX"

> (John Smith Liked "XXX")

Including the parenthesis. Make it clear that it's not a real, typed message from the person.

There are two reasons which together make it all make sense:

tldr; It's pre-installed and way better than SMS

1. iMessage is leagues more reliable and faster than SMS/MMS on even horrible connections allowing a real-time cadence to conversation with indications if messages were actually received and possibly if they've already been seen. Its features are also not crippled so simple things like sending photos between $1k+ phones does not end up with MySpace quality photos that are otherwise supposed to be 12MP Live HDR photos. Let alone sending longish videos (3 min+)

2. iMessage is already installed and integrated in iOS unlike WhatsApp which literally has all the most important features and MORE, but, for reasons I do not fully understand, I simply like using iMessage more. And so do most of my friends.

iMessage and FaceTime audio. There are occasions where T-mobile’s voice network won’t let a call through, but I can use the data network to do FaceTime audio.

I’ve had to use FB Messenger at times to contact my one or two relatives who just refuse to by an iPhone.

I wanted to do a group video chat with relatives and we all had to use Facebook Messenger because one person didn’t have an iPhone. We just left the person out a few times because we didn’t want to bother with lower quality messenging.

There’s also the fact that WhatsApp is Facebook. I dumped Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all at the same time and will not install any of them on my devices.

More of a reason not to be friends with them.

You can’t expect full commitment from people you may not know too well. The UI/UX benefits outweigh acquaintances, not friends.

Unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.

Sadly, this is not how relationships work and exactly how entrenched social networks come into existence.

In a way, toxic behavior like this is an indicator of how your future relationship with this person will go.

If they're going to be this basic, then I'm probably going to extrapolate how these people will behave in the future.

Although, maybe thats why I only have a very few select close friends.

It might be possible to be in a majority-Android friend group outside of North America, but not really here. iMessage is far too entrenched in the US for that to be possible.

> I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles"

Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.

I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.

To be fair, I can entirely understand why they’d do it: the platform all but makes you annoyed at people who don’t have iPhones.

>I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.

You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?

>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.

You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.

Now you've got me curious. Are these people in the tech industry? What would their age range be, roughly?

Most of this happened while I was in high school, and now I am currently 22 years old.

Exactly zero of the people who have said any of these things are in the tech industry

This is very true in the US, but not a thing overseas (at least in Israel). Everyone is on WhatsApp for texting.

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