Substitute "friends" with "friends, family, and workmates" and you get to see the problem. Some of them cannot be replaced, no matter how much I would like that!
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Your iPhone May Be Sending Message Read Receipts Even If You Turned Them Off
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Is it tied to VIP status? And it seems to be inconsistent. The wife reported that I'm not reading her messages anymore, after they stopped being tagged as being 'read'. I remember being shocked that she was getting the notice at one time, and that it stopped and she was accusing me of ignoring her (NEVER NEVER NEVER appear to be ignoring your wife/spouse. Just don't) and had to respond in the bright spotlight she was focusing on me. So this is what was going on. Interesting that it appeared to stop at some point. Thanks Apple! 
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Yeah, 'family'...
I dropped out of the 'family' Facebook group, and you would have thought that I had killed half of them and fed them to the other half. OMF!!! I was harassed on a near daily basis on why I quit. One family member thought I had died (and didn't tell anyone) and another thought my 'overbearing wife' had pulled the plug (or locked me in the basement).
I finally quit FB, and people just accepted it. The group was so inane and pointless, but you can't deny family, no matter how hard you try. (Some found one of my email accounts and ruthlessly tried to keep me informed on 'family matters'. I blocked them
)But nothing is worse than the post I made earlier on the wife not getting the read receipts she was getting for some reason. I thought of turning that on, but I don't want others that I message to be anxiously waiting for the status to change, and harassing me because it's taken 'so long' for it to happen. I hated read receipts on corporate email, and they allowed people to turn it off, but I was pointedly informed that it was 'bad juju' to turn it off...
Lots of "not married typing" detected in this thread.
I leave my read message receipts on because if it's not on, my wife immediately notices and wants to know why I turned it off.
Now, this isn't a problem. I have nothing to hide from my wife except her birthday surprise and what I'm cooking for dinner for her.
But if iOS had turned it off without me turning it off, any my wife saw it? I would have to explain that, and "there's a bug in iOS 15" is absolutely NOT cutting it....
I leave my read message receipts on because if it's not on, my wife immediately notices and wants to know why I turned it off.
Now, this isn't a problem. I have nothing to hide from my wife except her birthday surprise and what I'm cooking for dinner for her.
But if iOS had turned it off without me turning it off, any my wife saw it? I would have to explain that, and "there's a bug in iOS 15" is absolutely NOT cutting it....
I have the option disabled. If others happen to see that I read the text with this bug, I don’t care. I respond on my terms not other people’s expectations.
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I was getting my iPhone ringing numbers in my contacts while it was turned off
Very annoying, seems to have gone now thank god
Very annoying, seems to have gone now thank god
That I am on the toilet and can’t be bothered trying to have a live conversation!
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
Suspended
I respond on my terms not other people’s expectations.
That's a very good point. Said very well.
Lol my husband and I leave each other on “read” all the time. We never knew it was a big deal until our kids explained among their age group it’s apparently an act of war.
Among our peers aged 40-60, we all were used to communicating in emails for the last 25 years, so text etiquette is approximately the same for us. I don’t know how it is in other social circles.
You took the time to actually open the message and read it. You can't take another 2 seconds to reply? If that's your thought process just read it in your notification center instead of opening it and leaving someone hanging on "read".
He doesn’t owe other people an instant reply. He also shouldn’t have to change his reply behavior to appease the insecurity of other people.
A lot of times it is much better to mull over a text before responding, so that one doesn’t suffer foot in mouth disease.
I always kept mines closed, which is now. If the bug happens, and someone got the gall to overact at me because they were left on read. Well I'll tell them it's an apple bug and I take my time to respond, and if they feel not right about this then they can have a coke and a smile or go punch a hole in the wall idgaf because they better find a way to deal with it, and I won't be the one helping them
Except in a lot of cases, I don’t care if they/you answer quickly, I just want to know that the message has been received (not just by the phone, but by them/you) - if the message is, say, “the gathering has been rescheduled from Tuesday to Wednesday”, I want to know that we don’t have to worry that you’re still going to show up on Tuesday. And if the timing is closer (e.g. moving from 3pm to 5pm today), if you don't have read receipts on and don’t respond quickly, then I/we have to call you to make sure you’ve gotten the message, which is more disruptive for both ends.
Your perception of what’s happening at the other end may be wrong in many cases, and needlessly causing frustration and/or extra work for the other person. I find people who have read receipts turned off just that much more annoying and/or just go with the idea that they’re not capable of figuring out how to turn them on.
And some don’t care when or if you respond but really need to know you (not just you phone) has received the message. You think you’re fixing a problem but you’re really just replacing one problem with another.
Try having a helicopter parent, a stalky partner, an invasive boundary-disrespecting boss, anyone who has any kind of paranoia...
People will even freak out if they see the typing bubble but don't get a message. In some ways these live status reports have created a lot of potential for paranoia. Sometimes total transparency isn't a good thing, because of the assumptions it'll cause some to make with incomplete information.
And that's why you can enable or disable it per contact. If you have someone who isn't a paranoid stalker, and they respect that you might see the message but not respond right away, by all means turn read receipts on for that contact.
My question is: If I promptly delete msg (without even opening/reading it) will the sender see it as “read“? also what about phishing msgs? You open, read the crud, roll your eyes, delete - is your friendly phish supplier notified that this is a live one?
A recurring iOS bug that makes Apple's Messages app send read receipts despite the setting being disabled appears to be on the upswing again, based on reports from users running iOS 15.
In iOS, with read receipts enabled (Settings -> Messages -> Send Read Receipts), the "Delivered" text that a person sees under an iMessage they have sent you turns to "Read" when you've viewed it in the conversation thread, so they know you've seen the message even if you've not responded. The setting syncs across all Apple devices signed into the same Apple ID.
Over the last few years there have been sporadic reports that Messages doesn't always observe the user setting, but according to Macworld's Glenn Fleishman, the bug appears to be rearing its head again, only this time for a larger number of users running the latest version of iOS 15.
Some people have found that restarting their device resolves the problem, at least temporarily, but no permanent fix has been discovered, suggesting Apple needs to change something about the way the function works in a future update to its mobile operating system. We'll update this article if we learn more.
Article Link: Your iPhone May Be Sending Message Read Receipts Even If You Turned Them Off
No, not just my assumption.
The easier and least formal it is to communicate, the quicker person A expects person B to reply.
Think about email. People can leave them un-replied for much longer than text messages, because it's more formal and heavy duty with all the formalities (hi, bye and signature).