Agreed on the "typing" thing being somewhat invasive. I'm not sure that can be turned off...
In iMessage, the "seen" notis (read receipts) are set on the reader side. They're totally customizable and can be globally disabled.
I have them on personally, because I find that it encourages good reply etiquette on my part, but they're easy to turn off in a granular way. chat-by-chat, whenever you want.
I'm not sure how this works for IG, others. I believe in whatsapp you can turn them off at the expense of losing that info for everyone else, but I'm not 100% on that.
The feature is extraordinarily useful in group chats. If you're trying to change venues while coordinating a group activity with people that haven't arrived, you get a realtime picture of who has up-to-date information and who doesn't. Makes a big difference.
Read receipts are disabled by default IIRC. In the rare cases where I'm drafting a message long enough to worry about the typing indicator, it's usually easier anyway to compose it in a text editor/notes app and copy/paste when I'm ready to send.
In iMessage, the "seen" notis (read receipts) are set on the reader side. They're totally customizable and can be globally disabled.
I have them on personally, because I find that it encourages good reply etiquette on my part, but they're easy to turn off in a granular way. chat-by-chat, whenever you want.
I'm not sure how this works for IG, others. I believe in whatsapp you can turn them off at the expense of losing that info for everyone else, but I'm not 100% on that.
The feature is extraordinarily useful in group chats. If you're trying to change venues while coordinating a group activity with people that haven't arrived, you get a realtime picture of who has up-to-date information and who doesn't. Makes a big difference.