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The issue of “green bubble shaming” was raised in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Apple last week. The tech giant says it plans to address the issue.
NPR
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NPR
The issue of “green bubble shaming” was raised in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Apple last week. The tech giant says it plans to address the issue.
NPR
San Francisco technology consultant Michael Anderson considers himself an unapologetic Android user. It comes up a lot in his love life.
When he was single and using dating apps, discussing the color of messages with potential dates who had iPhones became a familiar and cumbersome ritual.
“We take the big step of getting off apps and starting texting. And the first text I get, not always, but certainly many times, is, ‘Oh, it’s your bubble.’ ” said the 33-year-old man. Old Man Anderson mentioned the green bubble his text that appears when an iPhone user sends a message to his Android.
for Several Anderson points out that for singles, the green bubble is a deal-breaker.
“I’ve heard stories of friends who actually became ghosts because of it,” he says. “You wouldn’t want to date that type of person in the first place, but it’s really prevalent.”
Anderson is currently engaged. His fiancée is an iPhone user nonetheless.
As anyone who has experienced the blue-green divide knows, there is more to the bubble culture wars than just aggravating color differences.
When people using Android send text messages to iMessage users, the quality of photos and videos is poor. Live location tracking is not possible. You can’t react to text the same way. There are no bouncy ellipses to create suspense that indicate someone is writing. And the conversation becomes less secure. For that matter, green bubbles lead to ridicule.
Some people call this phenomenon “green bubble shaming.”
And as frivolous as it may seem, the bubble issue became more serious last week when Apple was cited by the Justice Department as an example of its alleged abuse of power.
Justice Department says green bubble is linked to anticompetitive behavior
U.S. authorities claim that Apple intentionally makes iMessage texting frustrating for Android users in order to encourage people to buy iPhones. Apple denies this claim.
In its lawsuit against Apple, the Department of Justice asserts that “Apple clearly undermined the quality of its rivals’ smartphones,” and further argued that the iPhone’s popularity was due not only to the quality of its products, but also to its “deterioration in communication with other smartphones.” It was also facilitated by this,” he added. ”
While some Android users find green bubbles disconcerting, others, like Anju Gupta, who works for NASA in Washington, D.C., consider them a badge of honor.
“I’ve never felt embarrassed,” said 37-year-old Gupta. “If anything, I’m a pretty open-minded Android user.”
But when people blamed her for the pesky green bubbles, Ms. Gupta exacted some mild revenge.
“In group chats, people would complain and be like, ‘Oh my god, I have an Android user,’ and I’d get really annoyed and I’d start liking every message. You start, and then you blow up everyone’s cell phones,” she said.
After long resistance, Apple commits to change
Apple has long defended the green bubble, arguing that the color tells people that Apple messages are encrypted on iPhones and messages on Android are not.
But late last year, Apple changed direction. Android users will soon be able to communicate more fluidly on iMessage, but the green bubble will remain, the company says.
For years, the mobile phone industry has been transitioning from Short Message Service, also known as SMS, to something called RCS, a new messaging standard that Google and other companies have already adopted.
Encrypt group chats, high-resolution photos and videos, and messages. But Apple has long rejected RCS in favor of its own messaging system, iMessage, arguing that messaging systems outside the Apple ecosystem could jeopardize the security and privacy of iPhone users.
However, under pressure from European regulators and the Department of Justice, Apple agreed to support RCS in November.
“Thankfully, RCS will bring many long-missing features to green bubble conversations in Messages,” wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization. The group notes that it remains unclear how Apple intends to encrypt his RCS text messages.
According to Apple, RCS does not replace iMessage, but instead incorporates the messaging system used by Android to enable location sharing, typing indicators, read receipts, group chats, and high-quality photos and videos between rival devices. It will be possible to share it on .
Apple hasn’t committed to a timeline other than saying it will begin adopting RCS sometime in 2024.
Anderson, of San Francisco, welcomes the change, but is frustrated that it’s taken so long.
“I feel like we’re still at the mercy of the whims of big companies who decide whether or not we put a ‘heart’ on a message from our fiancée,” Anderson said. “This is a completely avoidable stupid problem,” he said. “If Apple were less hostile, I would have been more likely to buy an iPhone.”
But Anderson added that it would be difficult to get rid of the android identity.
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