I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
I think near-universal unlimited texting is a fairly new (last decade) thing. Take a look at this 2008 CNET article: https://www.cnet.com/culture/the-rising-cost-of-texting/ . They’re talking about a cost increase, but acting like paying is to be expected.
Maybe, but receiving sms is a different thing.
Like way back in the era before GSM, on analogue mobile phones you were charged for incoming calls too. I think in some countries that had stayed for the GSM (and equivalents) for quite a while too too.
But not sms. In some strange flash of sanity, when the 160 characters for sms got dug out and scraped out of the pits of GSM signaling systems, cell network providers agreed to never charge customers for incoming sms in roaming. Probably indeed because sms is nothing more than a piece of the signaling system, and nobody wanted to keep tracking and charging for that shit. And so nobody charged for incoming sms in general.
Thus, breaking that rule is just truly bizarre.