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by logicprog 696 days ago
Except, by turning them off, you are therefore forcing people who want to communicate with you to adapt to your communication preferences because you have, by fiat, decided that you simply don't want to perceive the communication method they prefer. Coming to an agreement with others about how you want to communicate with them as fine, but communication is a two-way street, and so it has to be bilaterally negotiated by both parties, in which case it is very fair for someone to question your decision to unilaterally force everyone around you to change how they communicate by simply deciding to stick your head in the sand regarding one channel of communication. I find emoji reactions to be a much more efficient, direct and low boilerplate way of communicating, sometimes quite relevant and important information, and I would be extremely frustrated to the point of disgust if someone decided to simply turn them off and not perceive my reactions, thus forcing me to come up with polite non-phrases lile "looks good to me" to express the same reaction.

Also, I think this philosophy that all software must be infinitely configurable, so that it can serve every whim of every possible user, and that if it has a clear idea of what it wants to do and how it wants to achieve that, and sometimes that way it is designed to be used, it's somehow unethical or abusive of the user or something, is the fundamental sickness at the heart of open-source software design. It turns programs into unclear bloated piles of buttons and switches that are overcomplicated to use and impossible to properly quality assure and impossible to design in a coherent way. For powerful professional creation tools (CAD software, publishing, programming, etc) that will be the primary software used for decades by experienced and educated professionals who will want to optimize their workflow and who have the time to invest in deeply learning that one specific tool, then I think that philosophy is fine, but for random chat apps and stuff, it's just frustrating.
2 comments
ryandrake 696 days ago
Some people pay per text message received. So, they have to ask each and every one of their iMessage-using friends to please not send these ridiculous reactions, because they are ultimately another text message which will cost money. If that counts as "forcing others to adapt their communication" well then I'm sorry, but their preference is my cost, so I don't think it's out of line to politely ask them not to.

Ultimately, this is something that I'd rather be handled at the carrier layer: I should be able to have my phone reject a text message and not pay for / receive it.

On the topic of configurability: Software should ultimately serve the end user. When a developer makes an undesirable (to a user) change to the software and provides the user no way to opt out of that change, it's serving the developer's interests, and it's doing a slightly worse job at serving the user.

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logicprog 695 days ago
> So, they have to ask each and every one of their iMessage-using friends to please not send these ridiculous reactions, because they are ultimately another text message which will cost money. If that counts as "forcing others to adapt their communication

No, it doesn't, because that's engaging in bilateral negotiation of how the communication will go with the others involved in it. Unilaterally disabling the feature, however, is different, and that is what I was criticizing.

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throwaway3306a 696 days ago
What, pay for receiving messages? I have never seen that, not during roaming or even on IoT plans or completely free plans.
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aembleton 695 days ago
Maybe its different in other countries
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p_l 695 days ago
Was(is?) common in USA
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throwaway3306a 695 days ago
How does that even work? What if I spam you from a free sms gateway / unlimited sms plan?
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p_l 695 days ago
AFAIK it resulted in huge bill for the receiver, though I have no idea if certain services weren't billed differently (wouldn't surprise me if you could send text messages that were billed only on sender side, for extra)
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JohnFen 696 days ago
> by turning them off, you are therefore forcing people who want to communicate with you to adapt to your communication preferences because you have

I don't see how. All it means is that I won't see the reactions. That's my loss. I'm not forcing anyone else to do anything differently.

If it actually begins to interfere with communications too much, I can turn them back on.

> it's somehow unethical or abusive of the user or something

For me, that's not the thing at all. It's more that configuration options often make the difference between software being useful to me and not being useful to me. That's all.

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viraptor 696 days ago
> All it means is that I won't see the reactions. That's my loss. I'm not forcing anyone else to do anything differently.

"Are we ok doing ...?"

(People reacting with :+1:)

Now you have to figure out if you're being ignored or people don't have an answer. You ask them again directly, which they may also simply react to.

By bothering them again, you are asking them to do things differently for you.

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JohnFen 695 days ago
Well, nobody I know would respond to such a question with a reaction (an emoji, yes, a reaction, no), so this is not an issue in my crowd. I suppose (and it's obvious now that I think about it) this depends on what the social norms are in your group.

> By bothering them again, you are asking them to do things differently for you.

To a trivial degree, sure. Why is it OK for others to ask me to do things differently in this regard and not for me to ask them to do things differently anyway?

Social interaction always involves compromise and reasonable accommodations for others. In this sense, I ask people to do things differently for me every day, and they usually do. And others ask me to do things differently every day, and I usually do. It's part of the social negotiations that make societies work.

I do feel the need to reiterate that I am not opposed to reactions generally. Only in email.

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viraptor 695 days ago
> Why is it OK for others to ask me to do things differently in this regard and not for me to ask them to do things differently anyway?

It's ok either way. But it was you who claimed you don't request changes. We live in a society and all that. We can collaborate and agree on the way we communicate in groups.

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watwut 695 days ago
For christ sake, if there is explicit question do not react with reaction only, but use words.

Because, recipient does not know whether you are acknowledging that you read that question or answering it or what. Emoji reactions are ambiguous majority of the time. Which is fine when they are used to add emotions to the discussion, but not fine when you are actually communicating with it.

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