The U.S. Department of Justice said iMessage was suspected of being anti-competitive, and the reasons included creating "social shame"

According to news on March 25, the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple contains a rather strange allegation. The accusation is against Apple’s text messaging application iMessage, which is suspected of being anti-competitive because it is limited to iPhone use. However, the reason for the lawsuit is not just that, it also claims that green chat bubbles (the color of message bubbles for Android users) will create "social stigma" for users.

In response, a lawyer commented that the Department of Justice was actually complaining that people think iPhones are cooler than Android phones. It is noted that the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple can be described as “all-encompassing.” This approach is also known as “cast-net prosecution,” which means listing as many issues as possible in the hope of finding a breakthrough. . The Justice Department included all existing antitrust charges against Apple, as well as some that had never been brought before, as a formal complaint against Apple. Apple once considered bringing iMessage to the Android platform, but ultimately abandoned this plan in order to increase users' dependence on the iPhone. Wired magazine points out that the lawsuit does not just focus on business policy, but also mentions the "social shame" and "being ignored" that Android users will feel when they use green bubbles in group chats instead of blue (the color of iPhone users' bubbles). A sense of rejection. Green bubbles can also "break" chats, forcing the conversation to switch to SMS mode. The lawsuit also points out that this phenomenon is particularly evident among teenagers, who are "fearful of being isolated" because of their use of Android phones. While this phenomenon may be real, classifying it as an antitrust issue seems far-fetched. One lawyer bluntly said that the Justice Department is actually complaining that people think iPhones are cool and Android phones are not cool enough. Paul Swanson, a partner at the law firm in Denver, Colorado, said: "What exactly is Apple preventing? A company that successfully creates a network effect and makes a product cool can almost Seen as an advantage. But I've never seen a case where that advantage was included in an antitrust lawsuit. It will be an interesting case in the area of ​​antitrust law." Apple itself argued that the lawsuit attempted to iPhone becomes Android. It is worth mentioning that although the exclusivity issue of iMessage has attracted a lot of attention in the United States, it has not attracted the attention of antitrust regulators in Europe, because most iPhone users in Europe prefer to use WhatsApp for chatting .

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