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Comment by littke | Hacker News Reader

As much as I want to applaud your progress here, as a user I want transactional stuff to stay in my email inbox. My iMessage is already starting to become overwhelming from spam and apps — I want fewer messages not more.

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Same. I hope Apple continues to come down on these companies -- and their customers -- that abuse the trust that Apple has built up with iMessage.

Sorry OP. Not all products need to succeed.

Yeah I agree. Our goal behind this is not to clutter up people's iMessage inbox with more transactional messages. It's to replace the SMS/RCS conversations that people are already having with customer service and scheduling agents with something more conversational and human.

My existence couldn’t possibly be any more digital, and I can’t remember a single time I’ve had a SMS/RCS conversation with customer service or a scheduling agent. I don’t want to have one either. My message inbox is already full enough.

My iMessages are for conversations with people that I actually want to talk to. The notifications are high priority because it’s with people that I want to talk to.

I can’t imagine my annoyance if I were to receive an iMessage notification while I’m expecting an important message, only to find that it’s more spam.

My email inbox is already a wasteland because of this. The absolute last thing I need or want is for the same thing to happen to iMessage.

That's why we're making sure that all of the use cases are non-spam and also of high importance to the user. As we've seen through our customers, an after-hour customer support agent for their apartment, as an example, could be a contact of high importance for the user and definitely not spam in their iMessage

Why is iMessage "more conversational" than RCS? and "more human"??

I don't get the distinction you're making. I'm not an expert in mobile messaging so maybe I am missing something obvious.

And what about WhatsApp?

iMessage is more conversational because it's what most people are used to using and seeing. People generally associate green bubble messages with spam/transactional messaging and blue bubble with trust. Additionally, iMessage also has additional features such as typing indicators and reactions (likes and loves) that makes the interface feel more conversational. WhatsApp could also be very conversational, but most people in the US use iMessage.

Reading your responses it seems like your angle is to fake looking like a human by using the blue bubble. Are you worried your users will ruin the trust of the blue bubble thus killing your product with your product?

As someone who has no legal duty to advocate in your best interest, I think you should keep posting about your intent to damage the platform-holder whose terms of service you are contravening.

RCS has most of the features of iMessage, including tapbacks and large attachments. It's even cross platform. iMessage is the channel where Apple users communicate with their friends and family. Exploiting the trust users have in iMessage by injecting unsupported business messages into it degrades the value of the channel by destroying the very trust you are relying on. This model is about as sustainable as burning coal to generate electricity.

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