I would (grudgingly, because the whole thing is just stupid) pay 3 bucks a month or so to be able to message iPhone users from Android without dealing with unreliable message delivery and ordering, and photos and videos pixelated to hell. I have a ton of barely-recognizable videos of my niece and nephews from my sister because she always forgets that sending me video over MMS is a boatload of fail.
Unless I've been an edge case, SMS/MMS has been nothing BUT super reliable on my phones in Australia. Can you provide a demo ? I'd like to see what you're talking about since maybe I do have the photos and videos pixelated, I just don't see this.
They're just going to use prepaid cards they scammed from people to buy iMessage and absolutely spam the crap out of that.
iMessage spam isn't non-existent because sometimes someone tries to spam, gets a few messages out, and then their device gets console-banned. The iMessage "unsend" feature doesn't yet exist in any released iOS or macOS, so it can't be used to hide the spam after the fact.