Elizabeth Warren on green texts: Apple is ruining relationships

Senator Elizabeth Warren has tweeted a somewhat bizarre one-minute video in which she says that green texts are “ruining relationships” and that this is “just one of the dirty tactics that Apple uses to keep a stranglehold on the smartphone market.”

Warren uses the to-camera piece to voice her support for the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple, but has chosen a rather peculiar argument to do so …

iMessage is one element of the DOJ lawsuit

One element of the DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Apple addresses iMessage, and Apple’s decision to keep the app exclusive to iPhone. It argues that this is anti-competitive, and attacks the use of green chat bubbles for Android users as creating “social stigma.”

“Many non-iPhone users also experience social stigma, exclusion, and blame for ‘breaking’ chats where other participants use iPhones,” the suit reads. It goes on to note that this is particularly powerful for certain demographics, like teenagers, who The Wall Street Journal reported two years ago “dread the ostracism” that comes with having an Android phone.

Apple says that this is an example of the government trying to use the law to turn the iPhone into an Android device. One lawyer commenting on the claim said that it amounted to the DOJ complaining that people find the iPhone cool.

Warren says green texts ruin relationships

Sen. Warren tweets that non-iPhone users are being excluded from important conversations – and claims that Apple has “a monopoly on smartphones.”

Green texts on iPhones, they’re ruining relationships. That’s right, non-iPhone users everywhere are being excluded from group texts, from sports teams chats to birthday chats to vacation plan chats. They’re getting cut out. Missing out on plans and conversations. And who’s to blame here? Apple.

That’s just one of the dirty tactics that Apple uses to keep a stranglehold on the smartphone market. Apple has used its monopoly on smartphones to lock Americans into services and amass billions of dollars in profits. Apple even takes a cut every time you use tap to pay and has blocked a new app that would have let Android users finally use iMessage and get those blue texts.

That’s why last month the Department of Justice sued Apple for its broad-based exclusionary conduct. And that’s the right thing to do. It’s time to break up Apple’s monopoly now.

9to5Mac’s Take

There’s certainly evidence that Apple views iMessage as one way to lock customers into its ecosystem.

A previous antitrust lawsuit surfaced an email in which an Apple employee said that keeping iMessage exclusive to iPhone “amounts to serious lock-in” and Phil Schiller referenced it, stating that it showed why “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us.” Craig Federighi said that making it available on Android would “remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”

It’s also true that there may be a social cost to having an Android phone when everyone else in a group chat has an iPhone – if you’re a high-school teenager.

But that lawyer really hit the nail on the head. The law has no business penalizing Apple for making a product and ecosystem people think is cool, nor in trying to force it to share the cool factor with competing phones. That element of the lawsuit is silly, and Warren does herself no favors by choosing this aspect of it to voice support for it.

9to5Mac collage of images by Elizabeth Warren and Mariia Shalabaieva on Unsplash

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