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> Apple has customers who want to use iMessage. Those customers are not able to use iMessage to securely communicate with Android users. I as a Signal user wa

> Apple has customers who want to use iMessage. Those customers are not able to use iMessage to securely communicate with Android users. I as a Signal user want to communicate securely with Facebook Messenger users. Therefore Facebook must allow me to reverse engineer their services and make unauthorized systems to allow me to create a service to send messages to Messenger users from Signal.

user_7832 3y ago
I think calls for interoperable communication platforms is a good thing!
- joshmanders 3y ago
  Sure I do too, but I'm against this ridiculous notion that Apple MUST allow others to integrate and use their services for free. My point is nobody has any problem with the myriad of other messaging platforms that are completely closed, but all of the sudden iMessage is the bad guy because you don't want to have a green bubble with iPhone users?
  - user_7832 3y ago
    I don't think anyone's saying apple must allow them (though such people admittedly exist on the internet, in retrospect). I think its more of disappointment at the speed at which apple is "patching" this.
    - joshmanders 3y ago
      As an Apple user, I'm glad they're patching this fast. It's a security issue and privacy one. Sure Beeper may be using it in a non-nefarious way, that doesn't mean bad actors aren't gonna use this to spam the heck out of iMessage users.
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        You know, I have been getting constant scam texts from "Amazon" for a $289 vacuum that I'm supposed to call a number to cancel the order and it's coming from an email address, or a phone number. Never really got them before in that way.
      - striking 3y ago
        I've been getting iMessage spam long before Beeper existed.
    - badwolf 3y ago
      It seems the CEO of Beeper is literally doing that.
  - 8note 3y ago
    A proper thing is for the EU to require apple to implement an interoperabile message api and force that to be used as the default, rather than being able to use a non-interoperable messaging protocol as the default
    - maccard 3y ago
      Like SMS, which is the default right now unless both users are iPhone users?
  - kuschku 3y ago
    > My point is nobody has any problem with the myriad of other messaging platforms that are completely closed That's entirely wrong. A lot of people are angry with every closed messaging platform, which is why people are still maintaining the matrix bridges to Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Signal, all of which are still a cat-and-mouse game, violating the ToS of those services. Those bridges are actually what Beeper Cloud, their primary product, later was also based on. And these bridges originally are based on the libpurple backends for Slack, Teams, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, AIM, ICQ, Google Chat, Skype, etc, all of which were created through reverse engineering. So, yeah, fuck those closed services, messages want to be free, and enough people will care that we'll break all of those services.
- sbuk 3y ago
  And they exist. A lot of them, actually.
skeaker 3y ago
Sounds good! I would love to be able to do that.
kuschku 3y ago
> I as a Signal user want to communicate securely with Facebook Messenger users. Therefore Facebook must allow me to reverse engineer their services and make unauthorized systems to allow me to create a service to send messages to Messenger users from Signal. That's precisely what Signal started out as :) Before Signal existed, it was common to use Pidgin or Adium with OTR to send encrypted messages through SMS, Google Chat or Facebook Messenger. TextSecure – the original name of Signal – was created to improve upon OTR by allowing it to better handle situations where one user was offline while the other tried to send messages. Originally it only supported sending messages via SMS, not via their own servers.

user_7832 3y ago

I think calls for interoperable communication platforms is a good thing!

joshmanders 3y ago
Sure I do too, but I'm against this ridiculous notion that Apple MUST allow others to integrate and use their services for free. My point is nobody has any problem with the myriad of other messaging platforms that are completely closed, but all of the sudden iMessage is the bad guy because you don't want to have a green bubble with iPhone users?
- user_7832 3y ago
  I don't think anyone's saying apple must allow them (though such people admittedly exist on the internet, in retrospect). I think its more of disappointment at the speed at which apple is "patching" this.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    As an Apple user, I'm glad they're patching this fast. It's a security issue and privacy one. Sure Beeper may be using it in a non-nefarious way, that doesn't mean bad actors aren't gonna use this to spam the heck out of iMessage users.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      You know, I have been getting constant scam texts from "Amazon" for a $289 vacuum that I'm supposed to call a number to cancel the order and it's coming from an email address, or a phone number. Never really got them before in that way.
    - striking 3y ago
      I've been getting iMessage spam long before Beeper existed.
  - badwolf 3y ago
    It seems the CEO of Beeper is literally doing that.
- 8note 3y ago
  A proper thing is for the EU to require apple to implement an interoperabile message api and force that to be used as the default, rather than being able to use a non-interoperable messaging protocol as the default
  - maccard 3y ago
    Like SMS, which is the default right now unless both users are iPhone users?
- kuschku 3y ago
  > My point is nobody has any problem with the myriad of other messaging platforms that are completely closed That's entirely wrong. A lot of people are angry with every closed messaging platform, which is why people are still maintaining the matrix bridges to Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Signal, all of which are still a cat-and-mouse game, violating the ToS of those services. Those bridges are actually what Beeper Cloud, their primary product, later was also based on. And these bridges originally are based on the libpurple backends for Slack, Teams, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, AIM, ICQ, Google Chat, Skype, etc, all of which were created through reverse engineering. So, yeah, fuck those closed services, messages want to be free, and enough people will care that we'll break all of those services.
sbuk 3y ago
And they exist. A lot of them, actually.

skeaker 3y ago

Sounds good! I would love to be able to do that.

kuschku 3y ago

> I as a Signal user want to communicate securely with Facebook Messenger users. Therefore Facebook must allow me to reverse engineer their services and make unauthorized systems to allow me to create a service to send messages to Messenger users from Signal. That's precisely what Signal started out as :) Before Signal existed, it was common to use Pidgin or Adium with OTR to send encrypted messages through SMS, Google Chat or Facebook Messenger. TextSecure – the original name of Signal – was created to improve upon OTR by allowing it to better handle situations where one user was offline while the other tried to send messages. Originally it only supported sending messages via SMS, not via their own servers.