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Yes, totally understandable that this would be blocked within our legal system... but its a proof of concept that it would not be burdensome for apple to enable

Yes, totally understandable that this would be blocked within our legal system... but its a proof of concept that it would not be burdensome for apple to enable interoperability. We should be demanding support for open standards for messaging from mono/duopolists like Apple/Google.

seanp2k2 3y ago
Yearly reminder that a long time ago, chat services used XMPP and we were on the verge of having GChat interoperability with FB messages and I think Yahoo or something similar at the time. None of them really wanted to do it for business reasons, so they could “add value” (and charge for it)….same reason RSS has fallen out of favor (no good way to inject ads and tracking). IRC and Matrix still exist.
- verst 3y ago
  On the Google side the XMPP federation got killed when Google Hangouts and Google+ became the core strategy. The company wanted to focus on "social" (but their own social network) and didn't care about other chat. Back then I worked on the App Engine team which had a XMPP Chat API. When GChat killed XMPP Federation that API lost the majority of target users as a result. I tried to make the case for maintaining XMPP support - taking it up with some VP of Engineering. Alas, nobody cared about the opinion of this random guy in developer support (~2012, early days of Google Cloud)
  - kyrra 3y ago
    You forget that Google was worried about other XMPP services stealing user data. If I remember right, some services (maybe it was FB) was not sending out all data to Google in the federation system (I forget if it was names or friends lists or something). So it would allow other services to ingest data Google was sharing, but the sharing wasn't reciprocal.
- zaik 3y ago
  Can we make XMPP popular again? We really could need an universal internet standard for IM.
- acka 3y ago
  There is hope. The European Union's Digital Markets Act allows new messaging platforms to demand interoperability with the existing walled gardens. All it takes is for other jurisdictions to follow suit.
  - dwaite 3y ago
    You can't use regulations to change physics, and (demands or no) it is unclear what sort of interoperability is really possible. What will really happen is that there will be some subpar common denominator. An existing "walled garden" (WeChat?) would add support for this as well. But this would wind up being rather insecure, because messaging services tend to use email addresses they don't control or phone numbers they don't control as identifiers. We'd have to wait for carriers and email providers to be regulated with the burden of solving this mess (for markets they aren't in).
- rjzzleep 3y ago
  Yeah and how did that work out for google? Hangouts was their most popular product and most of my friends were using it. Incredibly stupid management decisions right there.
skygazer 3y ago
In my experience, incoming SMS are mostly spam, and other low trust notifications, while incoming iMessages, even if unknown to me, are likely to be real people. Buying an Apple device is an expensive signal, and Apple will quickly shut down abusers, maintaining that relatively high bar. Letting (actual) Android users use iMessage probably wouldn’t affect that, but the open source hack/reversing of it opened the door to iMessage spam that Apple, for the sake of reputation, and customer satisfaction, is obliged to close. Anyway, I guess my point is that there are some “burdens” that are less obvious than others.
- vachina 3y ago
  Huh, I used to receive spam on iMessage with blue bubbles. In fact the only blue bubbles I receive are spam.
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - rezonant 3y ago
      The GP is using a euphemism popular in the US. Indeed, the sent messages are colored not the received ones, but the euphemism labels the cause of the color, not the person receiving the text. If you are not from the US I'm sure this is weird.
    - rafabulsing 3y ago
      Wait, what? Android user here so I might just be confused, but my impression always was that it's the received messages that are different, hence the whole blue/green bubble debacle, and Android users being bullied for having green bubble texts.
      - rezonant 3y ago
        See my sibling comment for an explanation.
bradleybuda 3y ago
Also WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, LINE, and a handful of others with more than a half-billion users. Are those heptopolists or septopolists? The word "monopolist" in 2023 seems to mean "a company whose corporate values are different than my personal ones and/or whose pricing and packaging don't match my consumption function and/or who has a lot of money and of whom I am jealous".
- rezonant 3y ago
  I think you might be mistaking what monopoly/duopoly is being mentioned here. Those companies aren't phone manufacturers and they don't make phone texting apps. The distinction might not matter to you, but it's clearly the meaning of the GP. You can say iMessage isn't a texting app because iMessage functionally (as in, the technical details) works like a non-texting app, but it is the only texting app on those phones and is the way normal texting is done. Perhaps it would be different if iMessage was just installable from the app store.
  - eek2121 3y ago
    You are aware that iPhones have many alternative messaging apps right? The second part of your comment is simply not true.
    - rezonant 3y ago
      Texting is a feature of a phone. You cannot, without elaborate workarounds, text from a consumer computer, tablet or other device as if it was a phone. Texting requires a phone number and a phone plan. I understand that the distinction might seem slight, but in the eyes of most US consumers, texting is distinct from a chat app that you download from an app store even if it uses your phone number. The absolute one way that everyone with a phone has to send a textual message to another person is to text them with their phone number. In the US, where adoption of Signal, Whatsapp, Discord, or insert hundreds of other apps is very small, the percentage of your real world contacts using a particular app is also extremely small. Convincing all of them to use Signal would certainly be great, but in reality you will be using all of those apps if you are trying to escape the interoperability nightmare that is currently texting. Given that everyone has a phone and they are all texting already, it would be awfully nice if we could just use texting without these interoperability problems without having to manage all of the apps, and without having to remember who prefers which one. Group texting is also hugely popular in the US. If no single third party messaging app covers the set of friends you want to group text, what do you do? You text them. Because everyone has it. Let's say when you started your group everyone was on Whatsapp. Phenomenal! Start the group on Whatsapp. Then you meet Joe, and Joe is very cool and you definitely want him in the group chat. Joe doesn't trust Meta products and doesn't want to use Whatsapp. Should Joe capitulate, install another chat app used only for a single group chat, and grant access to their device to a Meta app? Should a negotiation occur amongst the rest of the group where they select a new common app to run the group on and split the conversation history, while also adding an app that they only use for that group chat? Let's say they choose to switch to Signal, but Josh keeps forgetting (dammit Josh) and keeps messaging the group on Whatsapp. And instead of yell at Josh that the group is on Signal now, folks reply! Because Josh's joke was super funny. Conversation also continues on Signal. Someone on Signal now does a reference to Josh's joke on Whatsapp. Joe is confused, but everyone else gets the joke. Someone realizes what happens and sends a screenshot of the joke and ensuing replies from within Whatsapp so Joe can catch up, but the messages around the joke are longer than one phone screen so there's a lot more context that he misses. Joe is annoyed but he gets over it. A few months pass and Sandra seems to have a bug where Signal is chewing through her battery life. Since only one of her group conversations is on Signal (she uses Whatsapp mostly) and she is fine not getting the work related banter that is often the topic of the group chat. But then she finds an article that's super interesting and she wants to share it with the group. She remembers that the group moved to Signal, but who cares, that Whatsapp group still exists and there's only, like, one person that isn't in it. She sends the link in the WhatsApp group instead. This leads organically to the group wanting to get together for a holiday. They plan out that July 12th would be a perfect weekend, and since they want to do a potluck, they all choose what part of the meal they'll bring. A few days before the potluck, someone mentions on the Signal chat that they are excited to see everyone at the potluck. Joe is very confused and asks what they mean. They realize that this was in the WhatsApp group chat and explain what everyone is bringing. Unfortunately Joe is working that weekend, and can't come. Should the group chat reschedule?
oefnak 3y ago
The EU will soon require interoperability between messaging apps! Real Freedom! (for the users, not for the companies)
- skygazer 3y ago
  iMessage seemingly was found exempt because too few Europeans use iMessage for business. Although to be fair, I have a hard time imagining a world where this ever happens. So large companies have to proactively share information on all their users with all the other large companies, and vice versa? Or do I become skygazer@iMessage and everyone on instagram has to know that? This just seems like an absurd thing to mandate.

seanp2k2 3y ago

Yearly reminder that a long time ago, chat services used XMPP and we were on the verge of having GChat interoperability with FB messages and I think Yahoo or something similar at the time. None of them really wanted to do it for business reasons, so they could “add value” (and charge for it)….same reason RSS has fallen out of favor (no good way to inject ads and tracking). IRC and Matrix still exist.

verst 3y ago
On the Google side the XMPP federation got killed when Google Hangouts and Google+ became the core strategy. The company wanted to focus on "social" (but their own social network) and didn't care about other chat. Back then I worked on the App Engine team which had a XMPP Chat API. When GChat killed XMPP Federation that API lost the majority of target users as a result. I tried to make the case for maintaining XMPP support - taking it up with some VP of Engineering. Alas, nobody cared about the opinion of this random guy in developer support (~2012, early days of Google Cloud)
- kyrra 3y ago
  You forget that Google was worried about other XMPP services stealing user data. If I remember right, some services (maybe it was FB) was not sending out all data to Google in the federation system (I forget if it was names or friends lists or something). So it would allow other services to ingest data Google was sharing, but the sharing wasn't reciprocal.
zaik 3y ago
Can we make XMPP popular again? We really could need an universal internet standard for IM.
acka 3y ago
There is hope. The European Union's Digital Markets Act allows new messaging platforms to demand interoperability with the existing walled gardens. All it takes is for other jurisdictions to follow suit.
- dwaite 3y ago
  You can't use regulations to change physics, and (demands or no) it is unclear what sort of interoperability is really possible. What will really happen is that there will be some subpar common denominator. An existing "walled garden" (WeChat?) would add support for this as well. But this would wind up being rather insecure, because messaging services tend to use email addresses they don't control or phone numbers they don't control as identifiers. We'd have to wait for carriers and email providers to be regulated with the burden of solving this mess (for markets they aren't in).
rjzzleep 3y ago
Yeah and how did that work out for google? Hangouts was their most popular product and most of my friends were using it. Incredibly stupid management decisions right there.

skygazer 3y ago

In my experience, incoming SMS are mostly spam, and other low trust notifications, while incoming iMessages, even if unknown to me, are likely to be real people. Buying an Apple device is an expensive signal, and Apple will quickly shut down abusers, maintaining that relatively high bar. Letting (actual) Android users use iMessage probably wouldn’t affect that, but the open source hack/reversing of it opened the door to iMessage spam that Apple, for the sake of reputation, and customer satisfaction, is obliged to close. Anyway, I guess my point is that there are some “burdens” that are less obvious than others.

vachina 3y ago
Huh, I used to receive spam on iMessage with blue bubbles. In fact the only blue bubbles I receive are spam.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rezonant 3y ago
    The GP is using a euphemism popular in the US. Indeed, the sent messages are colored not the received ones, but the euphemism labels the cause of the color, not the person receiving the text. If you are not from the US I'm sure this is weird.
  - rafabulsing 3y ago
    Wait, what? Android user here so I might just be confused, but my impression always was that it's the received messages that are different, hence the whole blue/green bubble debacle, and Android users being bullied for having green bubble texts.
    - rezonant 3y ago
      See my sibling comment for an explanation.

bradleybuda 3y ago

Also WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, LINE, and a handful of others with more than a half-billion users. Are those heptopolists or septopolists? The word "monopolist" in 2023 seems to mean "a company whose corporate values are different than my personal ones and/or whose pricing and packaging don't match my consumption function and/or who has a lot of money and of whom I am jealous".

rezonant 3y ago
I think you might be mistaking what monopoly/duopoly is being mentioned here. Those companies aren't phone manufacturers and they don't make phone texting apps. The distinction might not matter to you, but it's clearly the meaning of the GP. You can say iMessage isn't a texting app because iMessage functionally (as in, the technical details) works like a non-texting app, but it is the only texting app on those phones and is the way normal texting is done. Perhaps it would be different if iMessage was just installable from the app store.
- eek2121 3y ago
  You are aware that iPhones have many alternative messaging apps right? The second part of your comment is simply not true.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    Texting is a feature of a phone. You cannot, without elaborate workarounds, text from a consumer computer, tablet or other device as if it was a phone. Texting requires a phone number and a phone plan. I understand that the distinction might seem slight, but in the eyes of most US consumers, texting is distinct from a chat app that you download from an app store even if it uses your phone number. The absolute one way that everyone with a phone has to send a textual message to another person is to text them with their phone number. In the US, where adoption of Signal, Whatsapp, Discord, or insert hundreds of other apps is very small, the percentage of your real world contacts using a particular app is also extremely small. Convincing all of them to use Signal would certainly be great, but in reality you will be using all of those apps if you are trying to escape the interoperability nightmare that is currently texting. Given that everyone has a phone and they are all texting already, it would be awfully nice if we could just use texting without these interoperability problems without having to manage all of the apps, and without having to remember who prefers which one. Group texting is also hugely popular in the US. If no single third party messaging app covers the set of friends you want to group text, what do you do? You text them. Because everyone has it. Let's say when you started your group everyone was on Whatsapp. Phenomenal! Start the group on Whatsapp. Then you meet Joe, and Joe is very cool and you definitely want him in the group chat. Joe doesn't trust Meta products and doesn't want to use Whatsapp. Should Joe capitulate, install another chat app used only for a single group chat, and grant access to their device to a Meta app? Should a negotiation occur amongst the rest of the group where they select a new common app to run the group on and split the conversation history, while also adding an app that they only use for that group chat? Let's say they choose to switch to Signal, but Josh keeps forgetting (dammit Josh) and keeps messaging the group on Whatsapp. And instead of yell at Josh that the group is on Signal now, folks reply! Because Josh's joke was super funny. Conversation also continues on Signal. Someone on Signal now does a reference to Josh's joke on Whatsapp. Joe is confused, but everyone else gets the joke. Someone realizes what happens and sends a screenshot of the joke and ensuing replies from within Whatsapp so Joe can catch up, but the messages around the joke are longer than one phone screen so there's a lot more context that he misses. Joe is annoyed but he gets over it. A few months pass and Sandra seems to have a bug where Signal is chewing through her battery life. Since only one of her group conversations is on Signal (she uses Whatsapp mostly) and she is fine not getting the work related banter that is often the topic of the group chat. But then she finds an article that's super interesting and she wants to share it with the group. She remembers that the group moved to Signal, but who cares, that Whatsapp group still exists and there's only, like, one person that isn't in it. She sends the link in the WhatsApp group instead. This leads organically to the group wanting to get together for a holiday. They plan out that July 12th would be a perfect weekend, and since they want to do a potluck, they all choose what part of the meal they'll bring. A few days before the potluck, someone mentions on the Signal chat that they are excited to see everyone at the potluck. Joe is very confused and asks what they mean. They realize that this was in the WhatsApp group chat and explain what everyone is bringing. Unfortunately Joe is working that weekend, and can't come. Should the group chat reschedule?

oefnak 3y ago

The EU will soon require interoperability between messaging apps! Real Freedom! (for the users, not for the companies)

skygazer 3y ago
iMessage seemingly was found exempt because too few Europeans use iMessage for business. Although to be fair, I have a hard time imagining a world where this ever happens. So large companies have to proactively share information on all their users with all the other large companies, and vice versa? Or do I become skygazer@iMessage and everyone on instagram has to know that? This just seems like an absurd thing to mandate.