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Comment by jodrellblank | Hacker News Reader

I'm starting to find them emotionally manipulative in a bad way. FireFox settings should not be showing a sad-face emoji just because it's not my default browser.

Especially when I'm using BrowserTamer[1] to intercept all URL launches so I can feed a few work URLs to Edge and Chrome, and FireFox as the default for everything else, so it effectively is my default browser. It's not the only piece of software behaving somewhat like that, either.

[1] https://www.aloneguid.uk/projects/bt

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I recently encountered a payment app at a restaurant that had a slider for adjusting the tip. There was a smiley face above the slider and it cried unless you set the tip to over 10%.

(While usually expected, it's not socially mandatory to give out tips in my country.)

I wonder if this kind of thing actually pays off, or if it backfires more often. I know for me, whenever I see some emotional manipulation like this it makes the choice easy (not that I was ever going to tip into a computer instead of cash in the first place.)

That's not emojis being emotionall manipulative - that's Firefox being poor copywriters

>FireFox settings should not be showing a sad-face emoji just because it's not my default browser.

The irony of using the normative "should" to project your preferences onto Firefox, while expressing a desire that Firefox not do so on you.

Also - what about iPhones stubbornly showing green texts from Android messagers? That's not even "I'm sad you're using Android." It's more a passive-aggressive "I'm going to degrade your experience because your friend uses Android." Forget about emojis- Apple is weaponizing colors!

To be fair, the blue/green thing is kinda useful, I don't use a ton of apple-ecosystem exclusive things but it's nice to tell when I can or not.

What's emotionally manipulative about "should"?

... what's degrading about green?

Look at the re-sale market for used iPhones. Youth do not want to be caught dead with Android phones.

The claim was that Apple is giving someone a degraded experience. How is "Android user doesn't like their Android phone" evidence of a degraded experience for an iPhone user?

The reason why kids in USA don’t want Android isn’t the phones themselves but the way their messages get presented by Apple’s software. No teenager wants to be flagged as poor to their peers by a bright green bubble.

Imagine if Microsoft had done this 20+ years ago when they were on top. All emails sent from a Mac would be displayed in magenta Comic Sans when opened on Windows. Wouldn’t that have been a blatantly anticompetitive move to make Macs look worse to business users?

But green isn't the equivalent to goofy conic sans, it's just a color. People in Europe use WhatsApp and it's green.

The problem is that money based status competition is so rampant in America and this is merely an effect of it.

I understand, but that is a different discussion. "Alice doesn't want to appear poor to Bob" != "a degraded experience for Bob". If Microsoft had displayed emails in magenta Comic Sans they would have been harder to read, and thus a worse experience for the recipient, manipulative but still not emotionally manipulative - compare, say you install Linux on your former Windows PC and Microsoft change the boot loader to a war photo of a crying child being torn from her crying parents by an enemy solider and the text "I'll miss you so much".

Young iPhone users genuinely complain that the green bubble is searingly bright and ugly compared to the iMessage blue which is darker and less saturated.

I know the whole thing is kind of silly. But it clearly does have a surprisingly strong effect on people’s perceptions. And Apple has some history of deliberately rendering competing products as ugly (Mac OS X used to show Windows network shares with a grim icon of a beige CRT monitor).

There are supposedly psychological effects in using green at all, and there is also a known controversy over green bubble used on iOS bundled Messages app[1][2]. As for "should", not sure about that...

1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

2: https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-...

I mean iPhones do it purposely to make people buy iPhones. And it works.

Apple is full of marketing geniuses. They’re maybe using a lot of dark patterns but they’re raking in profit.

iMessage itself is a feature that makes people want to buy iPhones (maybe). The colour of the text bubble is not.

Ask a teenage girl whether she would want an iPhone just for the color of the bubbles when she texts her friends

The green bubble has nothing to do with with iPhone vs Android, it has to do with iMessage vs a regular text message. iMessages typically use data and text messages typically don’t. Furthermore, iMessages have greater features that obviously can’t be delivered to people who don’t use iMessage, like reactions and effects. iPhone users who use a different messaging app also have green bubbles, as do messages sent as a text message while off of data.

yes this. green messages imply the person has poor internet reception e.g. when out of town or during heavy storms

I actually get green text bubbles from a relative with an iPhone because they send messages to my work number whereas my iMessage is tied to my personal number.

I only get green bubbles, because pretty much everyone uses Discord or Facebook Messenger. The only messages I get that arrive through the Messages app are from Android users, usually via Android Auto, or automated notifications.

By far the majority of my text messaging happens in WhatsApp these days.

It has nothing to do with iPhone vs Android, it's just a symptom of Apple pushing people into using an iPhone-only messaging app which they refuse to port to Android, specifically to create vendor lockin! Totally different!

> The irony of using the normative "should" to project your preferences onto Firefox, while expressing a desire that Firefox not do so on you.

Firefox is not a person, why should it have "preferences"? It's a tool. Tools should be used because they're useful, not because they "prefer to be used."

It could be argued that the user above chose to use Firefox. They chose to use this in their minds inferior tool or a tool with an undesirable feature. They made that decision.

> A bad workman always blames his tools –Old proverb

Is the argument here that developers should no longer test their sites in FF?

I'm arguing people can use whatever they want. No one is making anyone use the browser of their choice.

> The irony of using the normative "should" to project your preferences onto Firefox, while expressing a desire that Firefox not do so on you.

Because I'm a person and Firefox is a tool? How is it irony? Next time you're going to say Firefox can set my diet just like I can set its search engine?

green to me = unencrypted and getting stored directly into a government database forever

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