> I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results.

I'm not sure how easy that would be - 'Apple will make you more popular if you use an iPhone instead of Android!'...'No no, that's bad, you don't want that, don't buy an iPhone!'

Google did an ad campaign recently that’s basically that line of thinking (plus trying to encourage them to adopt RCS): https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

Obligatory addition: Google’s version of RCS is just built on top of an open standard but is hardly more open then apple’s imessage so adopting that is not a solution either.

It matters to me a little bit. A green bubble means the message is basically a postcard that the carrier can read. A blue bubble means the message is in an envelope that my carrier can’t read.

My school had uniforms, bullying doesn't stop. Kids are honestly just mean, and not idiots. You can dress a wealthy kid and a poor kid in the same clothes and you will not fool anyone in class about which one is the poor one.

But does it mitigate bullying? Going straight to “but bullying doesn’t stop” is an unconvincingly perfectionist stance.

Not really, no. If a kid wants to bully you theyll find a reason to do so. If you've ever been a third party watching that stuff, you'll see what people are actually being bullied for doesn't really make sense. Take away the shoes and the phone and it will just be your hair or your posture. Bullying is a targeted activity

In my uniformed school, decades ago, money didn't matter as much as size. The big popular guys kept the rich guys around to buy them things.

Edit: power came from physical strenght, attractiveness and sports proficiency. Very much an ancient greek ideal, lol.

Bullying is about power. Bullying can be about money when you don't normalize the population for money. Nowadays you would need uniforms and school provided phones, I suppose. Never in America.