It almost seems like an internet meme that got out of hand. Seems like a handful of countries, including the USA (and maybe Canada, but mostly the USA) care about whether someone is using SMS or iMessage. I’ve heard complaints like Android breaks group chats/causes pixelated images (which is incorrect. It’s not Android, it’s the SMS/MMS standard that iPhones use as a fallback because Apple didn’t support RCS until iOS 18).
Where I am in the UK, it seems kind of crazy since SMS and iMessage died out a long time ago due to device agnostic options like WhatsApp that even iPhone users don’t care about iMessage