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> I don't get why you would regulate such a thing. Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform res

by dcow 4y ago

> I don't get why you would regulate such a thing. Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices. We literally have seen leaked emails where Apple deliberately does this as an anti-consumer platform lock in play. The slippery slope hypothetical you provide is not the reality. Nobody is asking governments to regulate adding cool new features to the <Open Message Protocol> and force everyone to comply and implement them. What regulators are saying is that Apple can't deliberately make Sneetches out of us and needs to allow interoperability on their human-critical messaging platform. In the US the DMCA actually makes it explicitly legal to reverse engineer a protocol for the purpose of interoperability. This idea basically extends that to "and you can't punish users for building applications that interoperating with it" but of course is framed as "just fucking stop disallowing it greedy asshats". If I could install a 3rd party SMS app on iPhone (like how Signal used to work on Android) I'd be more skeptical about needing this regulation. If Apple wasn't doing this artificially and iMessage actually had features that were innovative, and that other people couldn't reasonably be expected to implement in a way that wouldn't be a detriment to the protocol, I'd be more skeptical. (TBH they've probably spent more resources on preventing interoperability than if they didn't care and let it be open...) > Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? No, degrade gracefully. If the feature is an improvement for everyone and should be required, we know how to have working groups update a spec and have implementers follow (even when one leads the pack and drives the spec changes in the first place as is often the case these days). If that doesn't work build a new protocol and win people over with your obviously better CoolNewFeature. It's like you don't believe it's possible with the countless man centuries of resources these companies have to have software both interoperate and degrade gracefully when one client doesn't support all protocol features. I don't buy it; I believe we can. You're spreading FUD.

_cenw 4y ago
> It's like you don't believe it's possible with the countless man years of resources these companies have to have software both interoperate and degrade gracefully when one client doesn't support all protocol features. I don't buy it, I believe we can. Every instance of that is a huge guesswork mess that I wouldn't wish upon average people to navigate though. RCS has tons of "maybe implement" features, and don't even get me started on the mess that's XMPP. If you ever tried to use OMEMO from two different clients at once, you know what I'm talking about.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  > and don't even get me started on the mess that's XMPP. If two clients have good implementation, there is nothing messy about user experience. The only problem is that most clients are developed by hobbyists in their spare time, who might have very different ideas on how to do key verification, etc, so you get only what you get. It is not because of the protocol.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  > If you ever tried to use OMEMO from two different clients at once, you know what I'm talking about. No, I don't. OMEMO practically's only benefit is fixing that one usecase. By the way, iMessage is XMPP. Whatsapp is XMPP. Just artificially closed. Long etc.
  - _cenw 4y ago
    > By the way, iMessage is XMPP. Whatsapp is XMPP. Just artificially closed. Long etc. I've heard these rumors, but they don't seem to be true. WhatsApp seems to have moved on a long time ago (to a binary format wrapped in an implementation of the noise protocol framework) and I find zero indication iMessage was ever XMPP. But that's besides the point. XMPP is great for a uniform ecosystem (in fact, a lot of XEPs are some company standardizing their use-case), but awful if you allow federation and third party clients.
ribosometronome 4y ago
>Nobody is asking governments to regulate adding cool new features to the <Open Message Protocol> that participants can choose to implement or not for their users as they see fit. Isn't that exactly what you're asking of Apple? Apple already has SMS. You want them to adopt RCS because it has cool new features that are lacking in SMS.
- mdasen 4y ago
  I don't think so. I haven't read the EU documents and the article doesn't say, but you can do this without forcing a company to adopt anything. Let's say I propose this rule: Apple must publish the iMessage spec and allow other services to send/receive iMessages. That doesn't force Apple or anyone else to implement any specific feature, beyond allowing others to send/receive messages. WhatsApp or Signal could decide they don't want to implement the iMessage protocol and they're free to do so. WhatsApp might support voice calling, but that doesn't force iMessage to implement voice calling. It's simply saying that third parties can choose to implement the iMessage protocol if they want. There may be features that will only work within one platform, but that won't give anyone a lock-in advantage since others can implement those features if they're popular. For example, let's say Apple implements CoolNewFeature. They have to publish the spec for CoolNewFeature. Sure, maybe it will take 6 months for Google and WhatsApp to implement CoolNewFeature, but there's nothing preventing them from doing so. Likewise, WhatsApp already has voice calling, but you won't be able to do that with iMessage folks because Apple hasn't implemented that. That seems ok to me. If Apple starts to lose users to WhatsApp, they'll want to implement that interoperability. If it isn't an important feature, it isn't important whether they implement it or not. To me, it seems like this is about preventing companies from creating walled gardens. It's not about forcing companies to adopt certain standards or features. Apple doesn't need to adopt RCS. If others could send/receive iMessage-protocol messages, it would provide an interoperable system. Some might complain that X protocol is better than Y protocol, but that's the history of everything. Ultimately, those types of things haven't prevented third parties from creating interoperability with less perfect protocols.
  - koffiezet 4y ago
    > beyond allowing others to send/receive messages Just publishing the specs will not allow anyone to send/receive iMessages. It's built on a closed loop CA / certificate system. Remember that Steve Jobs actually announced on-stage it would be an open protocol without actually discussing that with his engineers? The architecture is designed to be closed from the get-go, and opening up the iMessage ecosystem in it's current design is simply not possible without giving 3rd parties considerable access to Apple internals, affecting a ton of stuff beyond iMessage, and pose serious security risks. Could Apple re-design a messaging system which would allow this and roll it out transparently to all it's users? Absolutely, but that would require a ton of engineering work, and won't be there tomorrow.
xen2xen1 4y ago
IOS 9 or 10 (been a while) turned off SMS fallback when the user upgraded to that version. People kept calling and complaining texting no longer worked, and it was just that they could only text IPhones. That was 100% a dark pattern / monopoly practice with no reason but to ensure market share.
- nickff 4y ago
  What do you mean? My iPhone often falls back to SMS, even when the other party has an iPhone in a poor reception area.
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    I saw, with my own eyes, an IPhone upgrade to a new major IOS version and the SMS fallback setting turn off. The change may have been walked back, but I saw it myself, and had to fix it on dozens of phones.
    - secretg 4y ago
      I have sms fall back turned off and I can still send sms. All that check box does ask you if you want to send SMS if iMessage is unavailable instead of automatically sending SMS.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem accurate. I've been using iOS since ~2015 and I don't recall ever having lost the ability to send or receive SMS messages.
  - skrowl 4y ago
    If you left iMessage on when you upgraded from iOS to an Android device, everyone who had an iPhone would still be attempting to send you iMessages and you'd never get them on your Android phone.
    - 4y ago
MarkSweep 4y ago
> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices. I would assume one downside is a higher amount of spam. Currently you need to have an Apple device to send an iMessage. So sending spam is an expensive proposition.
- krzyk 4y ago
  Spam operations have so much money that buying a bunch of iPhones is not an issue, even if they didn't, they could buy older, used iPhones for pennies.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Well then why haven't they? I get zero iMessage spam.
    - krzyk 4y ago
      I don't know, I don't get any SMS spam either. Maybe we are not that interesting? But I do get a spam call from time to time.
      - jkubicek 4y ago
        I'll add some anechdata: I get frequent text spam (about 1/day at the peak, it's slowed a lot recently). I've gotten maybe 5 spam iMessage messages during the entire lifetime of my phone.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    The bigger headache is the iCloud account required to send iMessages. A pain to set up, and after a few spam messages Apple will just terminate the account. And probably blacklist the phone used to do it. Sure, this isn't terribly expensive, but compared to the barrier of entry to SMS (zero), it is pretty substantial.
- dcow 4y ago
rodgerd 4y ago
> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices. I am looking forward to Google being able to finally get ahold of my iMessage and hoover it into their surveillance capitalism machine. What a huge benefit to me!
- pietro72ohboy 4y ago
  Incorrect. If multiple services interoperate with each other, that does not mean that one service can vacuum up the entire data on that network. As an analogy, Gmail servers cannot touch emails that are stored on Outlook and have never been addressed to a Gmail recipient. And if your position is that Google gets access to traffic flowing on a heterogeneous group of iOS and Android users simply because of RCS, that is again incorrect. RCS does not enable any new insidious capabilities that Google may not already have by the virtue of building Android. RCS will have no effect on iMessage whatsoever. Messages between a homogeneous group of iOS users has no reason to touch Google owned (or other) RCS servers. And for Android users, RCS is a meaningful upgrade from traditional SMS.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Google owned (or other) RCS servers Isn't RCS at this point a propriety Google protocol, not a standard? There aren't any 'or other' servers.
dcow 4y ago
Essentially, think of all the amazing grassroots OSRS clients we'd have that wouldn't have been C&D'd over the years if it was illegal to punish users for writing interoperable software...
_8j50 4y ago
> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices There are plenty. Like users thinking imessage is shit because of third party clients. Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted or forcing an all network/server to provide services to arbitrary clients? If I block firefox on my webserver, will you or EU tell me I can't??
- coldtea 4y ago
  >Like users thinking imessage is shit because of third party clients. If those are the concerns against forcing them to open it, they shall force them now! I mean, lol... >Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted or forcing an all network/server to provide services to arbitrary clients? There are no "inherent rights" period. Right comes from law, which ideally comes from what society deems worthy to have. If EU wants open messaging than can be made into a law. It's that simple. Whether the app is free or not is irrelevant. It's enough a consideration that it occupies a big percentage of usage share, so having it close presents a moat against communicating with a big chunk of the population (and also restricts those using iOS just one client). >If I block firefox on my webserver, will you or EU tell me I can't?? They very well could, if the right conditions applied...
  - _8j50 4y ago
    > Right comes from law Absolutley not true. The law codifies what is already true with respect to rights but the law also fails to codify rights as with womens rights and involuntary servitude, women and black people didn't suddenly gain rights when laws were passed, they've always had those rights except the law and society failed to recognize that until some point. Law or not there are fundamental and inalienable truths from which rights and obligations can be discerned. > If EU wants open messaging than can be made into a law. It's that simple. Yes and if EU wants to do any number unfair or dowright evil things they can, it is that simple. What is your point, did I dispute the simplicity? I was talking about what consumers what and what service is being offered by Apple and the inherent unfairness towards one group of consumers and favoritism towards non-american electronic makers and developers. They claim to be democratic and support equality and fairness under the law and by that claim I can contend they are in the wrong by their own standards. Any company and consumer would naturally be treated the same if the EU is not a banana republic and as such this affects everyone. > Whether the app is free or not is irrelevant. It is abdolutley vital! Commerce and trade can be regulated and taxed by government authorities but a free app is not commerce. This is regulation of speech and interaction between people. If apple at least had ads in iMessage it could be commerce but it isn't. You are throwing away your rights so u can satisfy some rage against a corporation you don't have to interact with. > It's enough a consideration that it occupies a big percentage of usage share, so having it close presents a moat against communicating with a big chunk of the population (and also restricts those using iOS just one client) So a big chunk of the population made a choice but the government should prevent them? Very democratic! You can pass laws forcing government services and entities to not use iMessage but even the US isn't banning tiktok outright or forcing them to be compatible with something they control because... you know, of the people, for the people and all that. > They very well could, if the right conditions applied... Yes and that is unfair and concerning because in a free society people have liberties that allow them a choice about who they want to interact with.
webworker 4y ago
> It's like you don't believe it's possible with the countless man centuries of resources these companies have to have software both interoperate and degrade gracefully when one client doesn't support all protocol features. I don't buy it; I believe we can. Did you ever look into what happened with XMPP extensions?
- dcow 4y ago
  Yeah Google killed XMPP because they just had to have a better proprietary protocol and now look where that got us... nowhere. To your point though, I believe Apple and Google 100% staffed and capable of implementing robust support for extensions. The problem with this historically is that it's one off devs and hobbyist projects that have tried to support this stuff. I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions from that. Look at the web and Chrome and what Google can do when they actually put their weight behind something (imagine if they had done for XMPP). Look at Apple and Google and WebAuthN. WebAuthN has optional extensions. It's completely do-able.

by dcow 4y ago

_cenw 4y ago

> It's like you don't believe it's possible with the countless man years of resources these companies have to have software both interoperate and degrade gracefully when one client doesn't support all protocol features. I don't buy it, I believe we can. Every instance of that is a huge guesswork mess that I wouldn't wish upon average people to navigate though. RCS has tons of "maybe implement" features, and don't even get me started on the mess that's XMPP. If you ever tried to use OMEMO from two different clients at once, you know what I'm talking about.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
> and don't even get me started on the mess that's XMPP. If two clients have good implementation, there is nothing messy about user experience. The only problem is that most clients are developed by hobbyists in their spare time, who might have very different ideas on how to do key verification, etc, so you get only what you get. It is not because of the protocol.
AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> If you ever tried to use OMEMO from two different clients at once, you know what I'm talking about. No, I don't. OMEMO practically's only benefit is fixing that one usecase. By the way, iMessage is XMPP. Whatsapp is XMPP. Just artificially closed. Long etc.
- _cenw 4y ago
  > By the way, iMessage is XMPP. Whatsapp is XMPP. Just artificially closed. Long etc. I've heard these rumors, but they don't seem to be true. WhatsApp seems to have moved on a long time ago (to a binary format wrapped in an implementation of the noise protocol framework) and I find zero indication iMessage was ever XMPP. But that's besides the point. XMPP is great for a uniform ecosystem (in fact, a lot of XEPs are some company standardizing their use-case), but awful if you allow federation and third party clients.

ribosometronome 4y ago

>Nobody is asking governments to regulate adding cool new features to the <Open Message Protocol> that participants can choose to implement or not for their users as they see fit. Isn't that exactly what you're asking of Apple? Apple already has SMS. You want them to adopt RCS because it has cool new features that are lacking in SMS.

mdasen 4y ago
I don't think so. I haven't read the EU documents and the article doesn't say, but you can do this without forcing a company to adopt anything. Let's say I propose this rule: Apple must publish the iMessage spec and allow other services to send/receive iMessages. That doesn't force Apple or anyone else to implement any specific feature, beyond allowing others to send/receive messages. WhatsApp or Signal could decide they don't want to implement the iMessage protocol and they're free to do so. WhatsApp might support voice calling, but that doesn't force iMessage to implement voice calling. It's simply saying that third parties can choose to implement the iMessage protocol if they want. There may be features that will only work within one platform, but that won't give anyone a lock-in advantage since others can implement those features if they're popular. For example, let's say Apple implements CoolNewFeature. They have to publish the spec for CoolNewFeature. Sure, maybe it will take 6 months for Google and WhatsApp to implement CoolNewFeature, but there's nothing preventing them from doing so. Likewise, WhatsApp already has voice calling, but you won't be able to do that with iMessage folks because Apple hasn't implemented that. That seems ok to me. If Apple starts to lose users to WhatsApp, they'll want to implement that interoperability. If it isn't an important feature, it isn't important whether they implement it or not. To me, it seems like this is about preventing companies from creating walled gardens. It's not about forcing companies to adopt certain standards or features. Apple doesn't need to adopt RCS. If others could send/receive iMessage-protocol messages, it would provide an interoperable system. Some might complain that X protocol is better than Y protocol, but that's the history of everything. Ultimately, those types of things haven't prevented third parties from creating interoperability with less perfect protocols.
- koffiezet 4y ago
  > beyond allowing others to send/receive messages Just publishing the specs will not allow anyone to send/receive iMessages. It's built on a closed loop CA / certificate system. Remember that Steve Jobs actually announced on-stage it would be an open protocol without actually discussing that with his engineers? The architecture is designed to be closed from the get-go, and opening up the iMessage ecosystem in it's current design is simply not possible without giving 3rd parties considerable access to Apple internals, affecting a ton of stuff beyond iMessage, and pose serious security risks. Could Apple re-design a messaging system which would allow this and roll it out transparently to all it's users? Absolutely, but that would require a ton of engineering work, and won't be there tomorrow.

xen2xen1 4y ago

IOS 9 or 10 (been a while) turned off SMS fallback when the user upgraded to that version. People kept calling and complaining texting no longer worked, and it was just that they could only text IPhones. That was 100% a dark pattern / monopoly practice with no reason but to ensure market share.

nickff 4y ago
What do you mean? My iPhone often falls back to SMS, even when the other party has an iPhone in a poor reception area.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  I saw, with my own eyes, an IPhone upgrade to a new major IOS version and the SMS fallback setting turn off. The change may have been walked back, but I saw it myself, and had to fix it on dozens of phones.
  - secretg 4y ago
    I have sms fall back turned off and I can still send sms. All that check box does ask you if you want to send SMS if iMessage is unavailable instead of automatically sending SMS.
duskwuff 4y ago
I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem accurate. I've been using iOS since ~2015 and I don't recall ever having lost the ability to send or receive SMS messages.
- skrowl 4y ago
  If you left iMessage on when you upgraded from iOS to an Android device, everyone who had an iPhone would still be attempting to send you iMessages and you'd never get them on your Android phone.
  - 4y ago

MarkSweep 4y ago

> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices. I would assume one downside is a higher amount of spam. Currently you need to have an Apple device to send an iMessage. So sending spam is an expensive proposition.

krzyk 4y ago
Spam operations have so much money that buying a bunch of iPhones is not an issue, even if they didn't, they could buy older, used iPhones for pennies.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Well then why haven't they? I get zero iMessage spam.
  - krzyk 4y ago
    I don't know, I don't get any SMS spam either. Maybe we are not that interesting? But I do get a spam call from time to time.
    - jkubicek 4y ago
      I'll add some anechdata: I get frequent text spam (about 1/day at the peak, it's slowed a lot recently). I've gotten maybe 5 spam iMessage messages during the entire lifetime of my phone.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  The bigger headache is the iCloud account required to send iMessages. A pain to set up, and after a few spam messages Apple will just terminate the account. And probably blacklist the phone used to do it. Sure, this isn't terribly expensive, but compared to the barrier of entry to SMS (zero), it is pretty substantial.
dcow 4y ago

rodgerd 4y ago

> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices. I am looking forward to Google being able to finally get ahold of my iMessage and hoover it into their surveillance capitalism machine. What a huge benefit to me!

pietro72ohboy 4y ago
Incorrect. If multiple services interoperate with each other, that does not mean that one service can vacuum up the entire data on that network. As an analogy, Gmail servers cannot touch emails that are stored on Outlook and have never been addressed to a Gmail recipient. And if your position is that Google gets access to traffic flowing on a heterogeneous group of iOS and Android users simply because of RCS, that is again incorrect. RCS does not enable any new insidious capabilities that Google may not already have by the virtue of building Android. RCS will have no effect on iMessage whatsoever. Messages between a homogeneous group of iOS users has no reason to touch Google owned (or other) RCS servers. And for Android users, RCS is a meaningful upgrade from traditional SMS.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Google owned (or other) RCS servers Isn't RCS at this point a propriety Google protocol, not a standard? There aren't any 'or other' servers.

dcow 4y ago

Essentially, think of all the amazing grassroots OSRS clients we'd have that wouldn't have been C&D'd over the years if it was illegal to punish users for writing interoperable software...

_8j50 4y ago

> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices There are plenty. Like users thinking imessage is shit because of third party clients. Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted or forcing an all network/server to provide services to arbitrary clients? If I block firefox on my webserver, will you or EU tell me I can't??

coldtea 4y ago
>Like users thinking imessage is shit because of third party clients. If those are the concerns against forcing them to open it, they shall force them now! I mean, lol... >Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted or forcing an all network/server to provide services to arbitrary clients? There are no "inherent rights" period. Right comes from law, which ideally comes from what society deems worthy to have. If EU wants open messaging than can be made into a law. It's that simple. Whether the app is free or not is irrelevant. It's enough a consideration that it occupies a big percentage of usage share, so having it close presents a moat against communicating with a big chunk of the population (and also restricts those using iOS just one client). >If I block firefox on my webserver, will you or EU tell me I can't?? They very well could, if the right conditions applied...
- _8j50 4y ago
  > Right comes from law Absolutley not true. The law codifies what is already true with respect to rights but the law also fails to codify rights as with womens rights and involuntary servitude, women and black people didn't suddenly gain rights when laws were passed, they've always had those rights except the law and society failed to recognize that until some point. Law or not there are fundamental and inalienable truths from which rights and obligations can be discerned. > If EU wants open messaging than can be made into a law. It's that simple. Yes and if EU wants to do any number unfair or dowright evil things they can, it is that simple. What is your point, did I dispute the simplicity? I was talking about what consumers what and what service is being offered by Apple and the inherent unfairness towards one group of consumers and favoritism towards non-american electronic makers and developers. They claim to be democratic and support equality and fairness under the law and by that claim I can contend they are in the wrong by their own standards. Any company and consumer would naturally be treated the same if the EU is not a banana republic and as such this affects everyone. > Whether the app is free or not is irrelevant. It is abdolutley vital! Commerce and trade can be regulated and taxed by government authorities but a free app is not commerce. This is regulation of speech and interaction between people. If apple at least had ads in iMessage it could be commerce but it isn't. You are throwing away your rights so u can satisfy some rage against a corporation you don't have to interact with. > It's enough a consideration that it occupies a big percentage of usage share, so having it close presents a moat against communicating with a big chunk of the population (and also restricts those using iOS just one client) So a big chunk of the population made a choice but the government should prevent them? Very democratic! You can pass laws forcing government services and entities to not use iMessage but even the US isn't banning tiktok outright or forcing them to be compatible with something they control because... you know, of the people, for the people and all that. > They very well could, if the right conditions applied... Yes and that is unfair and concerning because in a free society people have liberties that allow them a choice about who they want to interact with.

webworker 4y ago

> It's like you don't believe it's possible with the countless man centuries of resources these companies have to have software both interoperate and degrade gracefully when one client doesn't support all protocol features. I don't buy it; I believe we can. Did you ever look into what happened with XMPP extensions?

dcow 4y ago
Yeah Google killed XMPP because they just had to have a better proprietary protocol and now look where that got us... nowhere. To your point though, I believe Apple and Google 100% staffed and capable of implementing robust support for extensions. The problem with this historically is that it's one off devs and hobbyist projects that have tried to support this stuff. I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions from that. Look at the web and Chrome and what Google can do when they actually put their weight behind something (imagine if they had done for XMPP). Look at Apple and Google and WebAuthN. WebAuthN has optional extensions. It's completely do-able.