5 ms·

On the other hand, this seems like a teachable moment, where perhaps kids can be encouraged not to marginalize others based on trivial differences in messaging

by jl6 4y ago

On the other hand, this seems like a teachable moment, where perhaps kids can be encouraged not to marginalize others based on trivial differences in messaging apps. The drumbeat of inclusivity is pretty loud these days so it shouldn’t come as too great a surprise that including their green bubble friends would be the decent thing to do. I don’t place much blame on Apple for completely stereotypically standard teenage attitudes. If it wasn’t green bubbles it would be uncool sneakers. The answer is not to force interoperability (though that would be great!), but for parents to help their kids grow out of these tribalizing behaviors.

idle_zealot 4y ago
It's not just a trivial difference in bubble color. SMS conversations in iMessage lose features. The social rejection is a result of the features lost when an Android user participates in a messaging group.
- alvarezbjm-hn 4y ago
  The social rejection is a result of teens being teens, as pointed out. Adults would use another more inclusive tool, like whatsapp, email, discord, rss, etc.
  - conductr 4y ago
    I and most adults I know have never used those apps. We’re also on our ~15th iphone
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      You've never used email?
      - conductr 4y ago
        Not with my friends. It’s also a protocol which can be used on pretty much all devices with your pick of clients so was a bad example in the list.
    - MrVandemar 4y ago
      15th iPhone? I'm 50 and I'm still on my 1st Android phone (which is a piece of crap, but I have an environmental responsibility to use it as long as possible and it still does perfectly good phone things like SMS and voice and DCSS). I've owned maybe four mobile phones in my whole life. I guess you're creating employment. See: https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/settings-populations/children/e-waste https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-hea...
      - stjohnswarts 4y ago
        Most people use their phone for far more than SMS and "phoning" these days. You are an anomaly these days. That's neither good nor bad, it just is.
        Sjeiti 4y ago
        I'm on my fifth smartphone (since 2009). But I've always used Android. It could be that iOS users are more inclined to replace perfectly working hardware.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        Not all of us. Gigantic phones are off putting. Every few years Apple tries making a mini and that’s the time to buy. I’m fairly tall and have size appropriate hands (I think). I struggle to reach the top corners of my 12 mini. It’s very irritating.
        conductr 4y ago
        Agree GP is an anomaly and will say 15 could be an exaggeration a bit. I don’t know really but iPhone has been around a long time now and people seem to replace typically every 1-2 years.
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Not in most European or African countries, majority is on pre-paid, and phones only get replaced when there is an actual reason, not that two years have gone by.
    - cykros 4y ago
      This is a result of adults being teens. Some people get comfortable.
    - viraptor 4y ago
      Ok, so you're likely either not bothered by the messaging differences or not don't experience them. Now take a moment to imagine someone tries to tell you that your messaging system makes you not desirable in a group. What do you do as an adult? Spend extra money to comply with their ideas, or tell them to either use alternatives, or get over it? Does the fact you've never used those apps even factor into the decision? For context, in many places outside of the us the question is simply "which app do you use" and then you use that like an adult that you are.
      - conductr 4y ago
        As I said, everyone I know is on apple so no I don’t notice the difference. I have seen a couple occasional when non Apple users are on a group text and it breaks some things. I can totally see how teens are judging each other on this. They’re judgmental creatures in search of social cues to judge you on. Having android is analogous to wearing cheap Walmart clothes in my day. You’re social clout takes a huge hit. I get it and have empathy, but no solutions as I really think it’s kids being kids and I don’t think Apple as a business should be regulated towards an open protocol (only actual solution). I’ll never know what it’s like to be a teen that texts or has a smart phone because I didn’t experience it. But I hear teens don’t care about cars these days and that was a crucial part of being a teen with a thriving social life where/when I grew up. You’d get teased for not having one or having a old/ugly one. You were excluded from social activities if you couldn’t find transportation. You couldn’t take someone out on a date and it actually impacted whether you were even worth dating. And, it was very expensive for a teenager. The difference with adults is we don’t give each other a hard time about it. Or too much anyways. We will however absolutely refuse to use whatever app you ask us to if we’re am not using it already. We’re also probably not using it already. Most of us bought iPhone at the beginning and have never really considered anything else. That’s why we’ve owned so many of their phones. I’m not European but I find the idea that I should accept I have to context switch between apps based on who I’m talking to be insane. All my texting is in one app, just like email, phone, maps, etc. I might be simplistic but apps are pretty sticky for me once I choose a default for _activity_. I might be wrong, but if I remember correctly the reason the texting apps exploded over there was because you all had bad or expensive SMS originally. iMessage didn’t exist until 2011/iOS 5 and was likely Apple’s response from competition from rapidly growing companies like WhatsApp.
  - dzikimarian 4y ago
    You might wanna check out yesterday's discussion about Signal loosing support for SMS and see adults perspective on this very subject.
- nomel 4y ago
  > SMS conversations in iMessage lose features. "Lose" makes it sound like they could be found. Are the features even possible to implement with SMS?
  - redavni 4y ago
    Technically yes, Realistically there isn't a need. The iMessage feature set has been mostly matched by RCS on Android. Apple does not want compatible messaging.
    - GeekyBear 4y ago
      Google's version of RCS on Android is a proprietary closed source fork of RCS that Google refuses to provide a public API for. > Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one. If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs-apple-for-mercy-in-messaging-war/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs... SMS is a universal standard supported by even the oldest devices that will still connect to current cellular networks.
      - saxonww 4y ago
        To be fair, I don't think Apple has opened up iMessage either, otherwise this problem would have solved itself already with a third-party app.
        GeekyBear 4y ago
- Someone 4y ago
  And the alternative is that they wouldn’t be able to participate at all. In the end, I think the social rejection isn’t Apple to blame for. We don’t blame clothing brands for enabling kids to discern who wears ‘the real thing’ and who hasn’t, either. Or do we want to blame Apple for trying to improve SMS for their users without going through a lengthy standards process? They were a small player at the time in the phone market, so they couldn’t expect an iPhone-only solution to succeed, and writing an app wasn’t really a thing yet, so they couldn’t have gone the route WhatsApp later took, so what could they have done instead? The colors are UI to indicate to their users who has access to the improvements and who hasn’t. If Apple didn’t indicate in any way that some people have different features available to them, I think people would blame them for that. Also, US (AFAIK, this is a US thing) kids likely would still learn who could and could not use the features Apple added to SMS.
  - jackvalentine 4y ago
    > They were a small player at the time in the phone market, so they couldn’t expect an iPhone-only solution to succeed, and writing an app wasn’t really a thing yet, so they couldn’t have gone the route WhatsApp later took, so what could they have done instead? Mate, iMessage debuted in 2011 - 2 years after Whatsapp appeared on the platform.
XorNot 4y ago
Why is the answer not to force interoperability? This is exactly what we should be doing because it's generally good for the communications ecosystem and the overall marketplace. It's not an answer to the problem of teenagers having to learn decency, but I'm failing to see a downside to taking Apple to task on this.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > Why is the answer not to force interoperability? Do you want the U.S. government to just strong-arm a private company into adopting a not-very-popular plaintext messaging standard, or do you want them to force the licensing of Google's proprietary extensions that support encryption for 1-to-1 messages as well? (Even with proprietary extensions, group messages are always plaintext.)
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    The US government can mandate some amount of compatibility just as the EU recently mandated USB-C
  - akmarinov 4y ago
    To also give up control back to carriers, so that they can sell you packs of RCS messages with your plan.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    The US Government can declare that the companies involved must come up with a way to provide equivalent functionality when interoperating between platforms, and then the companies can figure out how best they want to do that. Then every day that's not the case after a grace period, or without convincing evidence they're working on it, they can eat fines or sanction from the FCC. I don't care how they solve this problem, just that they do and that's what effective regulation is about.
  - fyvhbhn 4y ago
    Force them to implement Matrix
- 4y ago
cykros 4y ago
TIL that there are people who just use whatever messaging app came with their phone. I may not like Moxie Marlinspike's decision to host Signal on the Play Store, but it's still the best SMS app out there for providing a moderate degree of privacy, and it'll run on iOS and Android (and desktop!) alike (though, on the desktop it only supports Signal-Signal messages, not other SMS).
- vlark 4y ago
  Get ready to switch, because Signal is dropping SMS support on Android: https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/ https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
- cristoperb 4y ago
  > but it's still the best SMS app out there Not for long (see this other story currently on the hn front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/)
e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
> On the other hand, this seems like a teachable moment, where perhaps kids can be encouraged not to marginalize others based on trivial differences in messaging apps. If you think that something something inclusivity will effect your children’s thinking more than peer pressure, boy do I have news for you.

by jl6 4y ago

idle_zealot 4y ago

It's not just a trivial difference in bubble color. SMS conversations in iMessage lose features. The social rejection is a result of the features lost when an Android user participates in a messaging group.

alvarezbjm-hn 4y ago
The social rejection is a result of teens being teens, as pointed out. Adults would use another more inclusive tool, like whatsapp, email, discord, rss, etc.
- conductr 4y ago
  I and most adults I know have never used those apps. We’re also on our ~15th iphone
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    You've never used email?
    - conductr 4y ago
      Not with my friends. It’s also a protocol which can be used on pretty much all devices with your pick of clients so was a bad example in the list.
  - MrVandemar 4y ago
    15th iPhone? I'm 50 and I'm still on my 1st Android phone (which is a piece of crap, but I have an environmental responsibility to use it as long as possible and it still does perfectly good phone things like SMS and voice and DCSS). I've owned maybe four mobile phones in my whole life. I guess you're creating employment. See: https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/settings-populations/children/e-waste https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-hea...
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      Most people use their phone for far more than SMS and "phoning" these days. You are an anomaly these days. That's neither good nor bad, it just is.
      - Sjeiti 4y ago
        I'm on my fifth smartphone (since 2009). But I've always used Android. It could be that iOS users are more inclined to replace perfectly working hardware.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        Not all of us. Gigantic phones are off putting. Every few years Apple tries making a mini and that’s the time to buy. I’m fairly tall and have size appropriate hands (I think). I struggle to reach the top corners of my 12 mini. It’s very irritating.
      - conductr 4y ago
        Agree GP is an anomaly and will say 15 could be an exaggeration a bit. I don’t know really but iPhone has been around a long time now and people seem to replace typically every 1-2 years.
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Not in most European or African countries, majority is on pre-paid, and phones only get replaced when there is an actual reason, not that two years have gone by.
  - cykros 4y ago
    This is a result of adults being teens. Some people get comfortable.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Ok, so you're likely either not bothered by the messaging differences or not don't experience them. Now take a moment to imagine someone tries to tell you that your messaging system makes you not desirable in a group. What do you do as an adult? Spend extra money to comply with their ideas, or tell them to either use alternatives, or get over it? Does the fact you've never used those apps even factor into the decision? For context, in many places outside of the us the question is simply "which app do you use" and then you use that like an adult that you are.
    - conductr 4y ago
      As I said, everyone I know is on apple so no I don’t notice the difference. I have seen a couple occasional when non Apple users are on a group text and it breaks some things. I can totally see how teens are judging each other on this. They’re judgmental creatures in search of social cues to judge you on. Having android is analogous to wearing cheap Walmart clothes in my day. You’re social clout takes a huge hit. I get it and have empathy, but no solutions as I really think it’s kids being kids and I don’t think Apple as a business should be regulated towards an open protocol (only actual solution). I’ll never know what it’s like to be a teen that texts or has a smart phone because I didn’t experience it. But I hear teens don’t care about cars these days and that was a crucial part of being a teen with a thriving social life where/when I grew up. You’d get teased for not having one or having a old/ugly one. You were excluded from social activities if you couldn’t find transportation. You couldn’t take someone out on a date and it actually impacted whether you were even worth dating. And, it was very expensive for a teenager. The difference with adults is we don’t give each other a hard time about it. Or too much anyways. We will however absolutely refuse to use whatever app you ask us to if we’re am not using it already. We’re also probably not using it already. Most of us bought iPhone at the beginning and have never really considered anything else. That’s why we’ve owned so many of their phones. I’m not European but I find the idea that I should accept I have to context switch between apps based on who I’m talking to be insane. All my texting is in one app, just like email, phone, maps, etc. I might be simplistic but apps are pretty sticky for me once I choose a default for _activity_. I might be wrong, but if I remember correctly the reason the texting apps exploded over there was because you all had bad or expensive SMS originally. iMessage didn’t exist until 2011/iOS 5 and was likely Apple’s response from competition from rapidly growing companies like WhatsApp.
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  You might wanna check out yesterday's discussion about Signal loosing support for SMS and see adults perspective on this very subject.
nomel 4y ago
> SMS conversations in iMessage lose features. "Lose" makes it sound like they could be found. Are the features even possible to implement with SMS?
- redavni 4y ago
  Technically yes, Realistically there isn't a need. The iMessage feature set has been mostly matched by RCS on Android. Apple does not want compatible messaging.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    Google's version of RCS on Android is a proprietary closed source fork of RCS that Google refuses to provide a public API for. > Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one. If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs-apple-for-mercy-in-messaging-war/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs... SMS is a universal standard supported by even the oldest devices that will still connect to current cellular networks.
    - saxonww 4y ago
      To be fair, I don't think Apple has opened up iMessage either, otherwise this problem would have solved itself already with a third-party app.
      - GeekyBear 4y ago
Someone 4y ago
And the alternative is that they wouldn’t be able to participate at all. In the end, I think the social rejection isn’t Apple to blame for. We don’t blame clothing brands for enabling kids to discern who wears ‘the real thing’ and who hasn’t, either. Or do we want to blame Apple for trying to improve SMS for their users without going through a lengthy standards process? They were a small player at the time in the phone market, so they couldn’t expect an iPhone-only solution to succeed, and writing an app wasn’t really a thing yet, so they couldn’t have gone the route WhatsApp later took, so what could they have done instead? The colors are UI to indicate to their users who has access to the improvements and who hasn’t. If Apple didn’t indicate in any way that some people have different features available to them, I think people would blame them for that. Also, US (AFAIK, this is a US thing) kids likely would still learn who could and could not use the features Apple added to SMS.
- jackvalentine 4y ago
  > They were a small player at the time in the phone market, so they couldn’t expect an iPhone-only solution to succeed, and writing an app wasn’t really a thing yet, so they couldn’t have gone the route WhatsApp later took, so what could they have done instead? Mate, iMessage debuted in 2011 - 2 years after Whatsapp appeared on the platform.

XorNot 4y ago

Why is the answer not to force interoperability? This is exactly what we should be doing because it's generally good for the communications ecosystem and the overall marketplace. It's not an answer to the problem of teenagers having to learn decency, but I'm failing to see a downside to taking Apple to task on this.

CharlesW 4y ago
> Why is the answer not to force interoperability? Do you want the U.S. government to just strong-arm a private company into adopting a not-very-popular plaintext messaging standard, or do you want them to force the licensing of Google's proprietary extensions that support encryption for 1-to-1 messages as well? (Even with proprietary extensions, group messages are always plaintext.)
- dotnet00 4y ago
  The US government can mandate some amount of compatibility just as the EU recently mandated USB-C
- akmarinov 4y ago
  To also give up control back to carriers, so that they can sell you packs of RCS messages with your plan.
- XorNot 4y ago
  The US Government can declare that the companies involved must come up with a way to provide equivalent functionality when interoperating between platforms, and then the companies can figure out how best they want to do that. Then every day that's not the case after a grace period, or without convincing evidence they're working on it, they can eat fines or sanction from the FCC. I don't care how they solve this problem, just that they do and that's what effective regulation is about.
- fyvhbhn 4y ago
  Force them to implement Matrix
4y ago

cykros 4y ago

TIL that there are people who just use whatever messaging app came with their phone. I may not like Moxie Marlinspike's decision to host Signal on the Play Store, but it's still the best SMS app out there for providing a moderate degree of privacy, and it'll run on iOS and Android (and desktop!) alike (though, on the desktop it only supports Signal-Signal messages, not other SMS).

vlark 4y ago
Get ready to switch, because Signal is dropping SMS support on Android: https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/ https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
cristoperb 4y ago
> but it's still the best SMS app out there Not for long (see this other story currently on the hn front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/)

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago

> On the other hand, this seems like a teachable moment, where perhaps kids can be encouraged not to marginalize others based on trivial differences in messaging apps. If you think that something something inclusivity will effect your children’s thinking more than peer pressure, boy do I have news for you.