> the social pressure (in the US at least) is insane.

This isn't a US-wide thing. This is about the priorities of a certain subculture, nothing more. Your friends just happen to be embedded in that subculture. My condolences.

The subculture of people who have iPhones? As much as Apple would want this to be, I don't believe there is a cohesive subculture that describes all iPhone users.

In my experience, in most countries (and outside the US especially) WhatsApp has already won the network effects battle, and it's the default messaging app in any smartphone. Even people with iPhone will all have WhatsApp installed.

Interesting; in whatever cultural bubble I'm embedded in, every group chat (even among five friends without any shared purpose) is its own Discord server.

I doubt that includes family, co-workers or neighbors, right? Here in germany WhatsApp is so ubiquitous that beside various friends circles you'll likely have groups for family, work, (sports) clubs, or your fellow kindergarten parents, etc.

It's the default form of mobile communication here.

In western Europe maybe, not in Asia for example

Here's a map that shows WhatsApp leading in most regions. And for Europe, even in countries where FB Messenger is the dominant app, most people will still have WhatsApp installed to ensure good "friend coverage". It is common to have (and regularly use) at least 2 if not more messaging apps.

https://rocketbots.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/AppMap_5a9b...

What part of Asia? I'm guessing you mean China/Korea/Japan. Whatsapp is by far the dominant messaging platform on the Indian subcontinent, extending as far the Middle East.

Where in Asia? The #1 (by a VERY LARGE margin) messaging apps in India, China, and S. Korea (at least) are all not iMessage.

(Whatsapp, WeChat, and KakaoTalk respectively.)

No, the subculture isn't "all people who have iPhones". It's a specific subset of people who have iPhones.

If you've got friends who have time to complain about it, but not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/...anything and prefer to exclude you, are they really friends? This honestly makes me angry when people say they're pressured into buying a high cost device.

I agree! Trust me, I was resentful for buying an iPhone too. They are my friend because we can't really move the conversation to any other platform. Some of my friends took #DeleteFacebook very seriously and deleted Insta/WhatsApp/FB while others refuse to download Line/WeChat/Telegram or any others because I'd be the only one they'd use that with. The network effect is bad and the only "standardized" communication platform that we all have is SMS. But because they are all iPhone users, it defaults to iMessage and they hate me for causing them to default to SMS/MMS because they see it as "slower and not as instant"... So other than emailing one another, there wasn't really any other options...

> because I'd be the only one they'd use that with

I started using hangouts, WhatsApp, signal, FB, and just yesterday line for a single person. This is really not a good excuse. People should be more important than tech.

Agreed. Unfortunately, many millennials don't see it that way. There's so many stories about the Green Bubble effect and how lazy people are to switch to anything else. It's sad.

>not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/

None of these are an alternative to iMessage. They all either are missing key features or require you to deal with unencrypted communications or relayed encryption.

WhatsApp, signal, matrix has e2e. It's not an exhaustive list either - there are tons of solutions to choose from. What are the other key features?

WhatsApp, though, is still owned by Facebook and, therefore, has all kinds of privacy concerns. Last I heard, the encryption wasn't e2e and used a key that was generated by the app. If that's the case, then Facebook has a copy of that key.

The key has to be generated either in the app or on some server. There are no other choices really, unless you use only ephemeral keys - and that gives you secrecy but doesn't validate the other side. (And you can still copy that key) WhatsApp is e2e on all devices since 2016 and uses open whisper, which is the same encryption as signal.

Regarding the key - you have to trust the app it doesn't share it with the app authors. That's regardless of who/how implements the encryption. And it's true for iMessage as well.

>it's true for iMessage as well

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that, according to the security white paper released by Apple, that the key is generated on-device in the Secure Enclave and that Apple never has access to it. The Enclave itself also doesn't have network access so there's no way for that to be transmitted anywhere by any other means except for physical access, which is also limited in the hardware.

You still have to trust the app to use the secure enclave and not generate the key in standard code.

iMessage does that, though. This has been verified by the jailbreak community and the netsec community.

Blue bubbles good. Green bubbles bad.

To be fair, if I was in such a group I would probably be the one passive aggressive about them using a messaging suite locked into a single platform too expensive for most people to afford (instead of Signal, Whatsapp, etc), so maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on your friends.

This is my friends too. I gave in to the pressure for a different reason, so it’s nice to not be excluded again. GroupMe seems to be the lowest common denominator for proper group chats (50+ people).