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| ▲ | tempest_ 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There has been an on-going meme around users using imessage getting messages from other imessage users which appear as one color and messages from android users(or anyone I think?) as another. So people know you are the android user in a group of apple users or whatever. I did not think any one gave a shit outside of kids. | | |
| ▲ | Zak 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have a group of adults in my social circle who won't migrate a group chat to anything other than iMessage so that I can participate. I'm genuinely angry at them for this and angry at Apple for its role in creating the situation. | | |
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| ▲ | CodeMage 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I just learned about this, too. It turns out that in the US, being an iPhone user is cool and being an Android user is lame, and you can tell who's who in group chats, because the messages that go over iMessage are represented with blue speech bubbles and the rest are in green bubbles. | | |
| ▲ | Zak 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's not quite how it works. You can't have a group chat that's mixed iMessage and SMS/MMS. If an iMessage user creates a group chat where not everyone is using iMessage, then it's MMS. I suppose now it could be RCS if everyone's using a device and carrier that supports RCS, but I haven't kept up with that. MMS has a bunch of limitations relative to any modern internet messaging app, so people don't want to use that. Some people are also very reluctant to install third-party messaging apps. | | |
| ▲ | CodeMage 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks. I don't actually have an iPhone, so my freshly acquired "knowledge" of this was based on reading about it on the Internet and I misunderstood what I read. | | |
| ▲ | Zak 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't either, but I'm familiar with the situation from talking to people who do. The obvious answer is to just use any of the many third-party messaging apps, but in the USA it seems like there's always someone who thinks a one minute setup process and tapping a different colored icon is too much effort. |
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| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | TheDong 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In most countries, the most used messenger app is Whatsapp or Wechat or LINE or KakaoTalk or whatever. In the USA, the most common messenger is iMessage. Unfortunately, unlike all the other apps I named, there's no Android app for it. Instead, if you try to iMessage an android recipient, suddenly iMessage turns into your phone's SMS app (not really sure why, feels like that should be a separate app), and half the features go away. You can no longer remove people from group chats (if any 1 of them has an android), you get strange messages sometimes, you don't get typing indicators. If they use RCS, and then go on a vacation to a country without RCS, suddenly your chat can break in very strange ways. As a result, it's very common in the US for people to be ostracized from iPhone friend groups due to not having an iPhone. When you use dating apps, if eventually you trade numbers and your partner is a green bubble, that's usually enough to end any chances at a relationship. Your family will remove you from the family group chat after the first low-resolution group photo. A company made a solution to this called Beeper Mini, allowing people to have blue bubbles while using android phones, and Apple of course immediately shut it down because Apple wants the iOS club in the US to have this tangible social benefit, of you being able to have a wider dating pool, being able to talk to your family, and so on. https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/10/apple-confirms-it-shut-... It's a truly bizarre state of affairs. | | |
| ▲ | retired 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’m honestly not sure which is more dystopian: the American blue/green bubble divide, or the situation in Spain where my doctor sends blood test results over WhatsApp, delivery drivers call me on WhatsApp, and couriers ask me to share my live location because they can’t find my building. Nearly all day-to-day communication is funnelled through a single Meta-owned channel. | | |
| ▲ | TheDong 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think the least dystopian is a semi-government owned app, like WeChat in china. iMessage is also controlled by a private company, and by my estimate, one of the most evil ones. Apple and Google are the two companies most complicit in feeding highly addictive and exploitative gambling apps to kids via their app stores, and they both profit massively off of it via 30% cuts. | | |
| ▲ | retired 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The least dystopian communication is email. Plenty secure, you are able to set-up your own server, you can communicate with everyone regardless of their OS or client. Rich text, photo support, video support. Open protocols. A sort of email but then for short messages would be awesome. | | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's got to be the most dystopian one of them all! It's government owned, so conspiracy theory is that the CCP can see everything you write and hear and see in the app. Whatsapp is end to end encrypted, so meta knows your metadata, so they can show you ads, but that's tiny dystopia compared to the government of the country you live in reading and listening to everything you do on your phone |
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| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | wlesieutre 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Wanting to have iMessage so your messages show up blue instead of green when you text iPhone people | |
| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | lecarore 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In chat on the iphone, ios users see fellow ios users with blue bubbles, but see android peasants with green bubble. There's social pressure to "be blue like everyone else" and the author caved in. | | |
| ▲ | lynndotpy 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The social pressure is also technological. RCS integration was a big improvement but it's still not up to par. It's not "ha, greens are poor", it's "android arnold can't be in the group chat because it'll fuck it all up" | | |
| ▲ | TheDong 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The tiny company behind Signal, and a bunch of even smaller companies making messengers, manage to make their app work just fine on iOS and android (and most of them on desktop too, some even in the browser). For some reason, the (second) richest company on the planet, which has a messenger app, is incapable of making an android app for their messenger and chat protocol. There's a technological issue, and it's nothing to do with RCS or SMS, it's that iMessage for some reason doesn't have an android version. | | |
| ▲ | lynndotpy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | To be clear, I'm not saying it's a technological limitation Apple can't solve. Apple originally intended to release iMessage as a cross-platform protocol. The technological problem isn't whether Apple could fix it, it's the fact that they haven't. So, group chats with one green bubble just work differently than group chats with all blue bubbles. | |
| ▲ | fragmede 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's a business decisions to do vendor lock in. "Free market" |
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| ▲ | munk-a 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not a technical issue, iMessage, whatsapp and Signal can all internally communicate just fine. It's a corporation trying to exert monopolistic pressure to box out competitors by forcing additional social pressure. |
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| ▲ | bubblewand 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why does everyone describe this wrong, every single time this comes up? It’s the consistency of the wrongness that confuses me. No, you do not see others’ messages as blue or green. You see your own as blue or green to indicate what kind of messages you are sending. If it was ever otherwise, it certainly hasn’t been for many years. |
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| ▲ | nixosbestos 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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