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Genuinely surprised at the prevalence of "Apple is right, Beeper is wrong" comments on Hacker News of all places. Beeper is filling a market need via a technol

Genuinely surprised at the prevalence of "Apple is right, Beeper is wrong" comments on Hacker News of all places. Beeper is filling a market need via a technologically creative solution. Since when is protectionism of large entrenched actors our cause? I miss the days of GAIM/Pidgin/Trillium/Adium and hope Beeper prevails here.

joshmanders 3y ago
Probably because while we're hackers at heart, we're also don't think that because a company is large and profitable we're entitled to their resources free of charge to sell to other people violating all of their terms of service.
- colanderman 3y ago
  I don't think Apple cares about the resource usage here. (Note that's not their argument, they argue that Beeper clients will bypass content protections.) The servers running iMessage, heck even the team supporting it, are probably a drop in the bucket for them. Apple's goal is for iMessage to remain an exclusive feature of their hardware. That exclusivity is what Beeper -- or an Apple-vended Android client, or RCS interoperability, or federation generally -- threatens. And -- it's exactly the proposition of, "to use our popular offering in market X, you must also purchase our offering in market Y" which is anticompetitive.
  - shazzdeeds 3y ago
    Lots of platforms like gaming consoles have exclusive content where the same company is both the hardware/services owner and the content creator. What would be anticompetitive is they leveraged their position as an app platform to stunt other legitimate chat apps from gaining popularity. Beeper claims that’s what’s happening to them but their legitimacy is debatable.
- asadotzler 3y ago
  [flagged]
minerva23 3y ago
My devil's advocate for Apple is that iMessage is relatively free of spam because of the exclusive architecture tied to hardware. The issue isn't so much Beeper as it is the open the door to anyone on the Internet. I.e. Apple probably cares little about Beeper itself, and more about the risk of 3rd party software accessing its services/users. A good number of us have had to combat spam/abuse in our careers, and we're sympathetic to the plight.
- colanderman 3y ago
  This argument I'm sympathetic to. But I think it would sit a lot better with me if Apple were to produce an Android client. That it's a closed ecosystem doesn't bother me as much as that it's tied to their specific phone hardware. (I'd still prefer to see 3rd party clients as I appreciate the integration those can bring. But the hardware lock-in is particularly egregious.)
- YPPH 3y ago
  Does that stop you getting spam SMS messages?
- wraptile 3y ago
  iphones and imessages are incredibly easy to automate for spam. Today's free, grey and dark markets are often powered by real devices as it's easier to maintain than to reverse engineer and replicate. Usually real devices are mixed with automation code for best results (e.g. real devices generate fingerprints and sign stuff while code automates actions). Creating barrier to entry for spam definitely reduces it but we know for a fact that's not a very effective spam fighting strategy. I also think modern anti-spam tech is really good. My Samsung phone here is really good at blocking robo calls here in Thailand. In fact I handn't received one since my upgrade to S22. If Samsung can block robo calls and open protocols like federation and email can stop spam through simple tech and volunteer work then multibillion company with some of the best engineers surely can't find this that challenging right? So I find the spam argument for closing off iMessages not very convincing to say the least.
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
awgneo 3y ago
I too thought this was "Hacker" News, where we found ways to break down barriers and expand access to services to the benefit of society. Apple is absolutely abusing their market position and we should all be finding ways to establish healthy, multi-platform communication standands. It is disheartening to see many folks here fighting for the status quo, which clearly isn't working. Beeper devs are the hackers I will always support, the kind that drive a subconscious shift of our morals to something more inclusive.
- xvector 3y ago
  How is Apple abusing their market position?
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    Green bubbles, plus making iPhone using friends and family too lazy to install a 3rd party messaging app (accusations not valid outside of the continental US).
    - averageRoyalty 3y ago
      How is Apple to blame for the laziness of your family and friends? I've never seen Apple disencourage in any way third party messaging apps on their devices.
      - meepmorp 3y ago
        I wasn't being serious.
        averageRoyalty 3y ago
        Oh my bad, that did not come across.
  - tadfisher 3y ago
    They are tying one market (phone hardware) to another (their messaging network). Whether that rises to the level of "abuse" is up to you. I consider it so because of recent reports that 87% of US teens own iPhones, and colloquial knowledge of how "green bubbles" negatively affect teens' social and mental health.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
latexr 3y ago
This conversation has been had at length at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38576857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38576857 The top reply addresses your points: > The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use. > It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. Beeper’s CEO is acting high and mighty, speaking like he’s some kind of ideological liberator, while charging for a service using another’s infrastructure. Had it been free and open-source from the start¹ you’d see a lot more people on their side. As soon as you start charging, you lose a lot of “hacker” sympathy. It’s possible to disagree with Apple for not providing iMessage on Android while at the same time disagreeing with Beeper’s approach. ¹ And I do mean the whole app, not the proof-of-concept from the teenager.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  Yeah honestly normally I’d probably support something like beeper, but they just give me bad vibes. They’re being painted as a scrappy startup but to me they seem like another bunch of get-rich-quick, move fast and break things “disruptor” types. Which, ironically, is what the hacker in hacker news has largely come to symbolize in my opinion. Apple has an established culture and history of not operating that way, to make matters worse. It’s “growth hacking” versus the only company that still understands polish, however monopolistic they may be.
  - eredengrin 3y ago
    Beeper has been around since 2020 and its primary product (now called beeper cloud) is an all-in-one chat application which supports many protocols from the same client, not just imessage. Even if imessage/beeper mini is the product generating discussion right now, beeper cloud has been the primary focus of their company since the start and beeper mini is just a recent tangent. They use matrix bridges as the backend and some of the devs now working for beeper were already working on the open source bridges which beeper now uses even before beeper the company existed. Beeper was the first organization (and one of the few it seems) to become a corporate sponsor of the matrix foundation, and they also routinely sponsor developers to work on the open source bridges that make up much of their infrastructure, even beyond the ones they hired on as staff. I'm not sure how all this points to "get-rich-quick" silicon valley startup type to you but the behavior looks pretty different to me. Given their history, my guess is they put beeper mini out there primarily to put pressure on apple. If apple doesn't shut it down, cool, everyone has access to imessage through beeper. If apple does shut it down, at least it leaves little doubt about the situation: interoperability is not impossibly hard, apple really doesn't care about the security or privacy of their customers as much as they like to say they do, and at the end of the day imessage is only limited to apple devices because apple is apple. (For most companies I would say imessage is locked to apple devices because it's about the money but apple is one of those companies that takes weirdly principled positions even when it makes no sense, kind of similar to nintendo in that way.) I suppose if all I had seen was the past month of buzz around them then I might perceive them differently.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tinus_hn 3y ago
While obviously the true Hacker News opinion is ‘hurr durr Apple bad’. Beeper is requesting money for illegally distributing Apples copyrighted code which they then use in a questionable way. Cry me a river.
- colanderman 3y ago
  What "copyrighted code" are you referring to? Are you alleging that Beeper has stolen Apple's IP? I haven't read this anywhere.
  - tinus_hn 3y ago
    They include a library from MacOS that makes it register: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38534247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38534247
    - modeless 3y ago
      That's why there's are exemptions to copyright for interoperability reasons. You can't hide behind copyrights (or trademarks) solely to exclude competitors. (I believe Beeper uses this library solely for registration, not normal operation.) Such tactics have lost in court multiple times.
      - tinus_hn 3y ago
        That’s a totally different kind of case where the barrier to interoperability is the ability to reproduce copyrighted content, like in the case of the DSMOS chip which contains a poem which has to be provided for the OS to work. These tactics have sometimes been successful and sometimes been unsuccessful. It’s just the legal lottery. Here they simply provide someone else’s library to perform the authentication. That’s just basic copyright infringement, however lofty the goal. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858511/what-is-com-apple-dont-steal-mac-os-x#858526 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858511/what-is-com-apple... https://www.theregister.com/2003/08/11/habeas_cans_spammer/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/08/11/habeas_cans_spammer/ You can’t write an emulator and sell it including the bios written by Sony. Has been enforced many times. Similarly, you can’t do what Beeper is doing here.
yaky 3y ago
Especially surprising since consolidating multiple messaging protocols under Matrix is literally Beeper's service, and has been for a few years. Several other comment mention "piggybacking", but there are plenty of services piggybacking on tech giants: SearX, Nitter, Invidious, Teddit, Libreddit. One can even argue that LineageOS and GrapheneOS are piggybacking on Google's efforts.
xenadu02 3y ago
Because most of us didn't think AOL was doing something illegal by blocking third party clients. AOL created the service and ran the servers. AOL was free to make it work however they liked. And we never tried to insist that AOL was legally liable for making any changes to their own protocol without notice or approval to third party clients - what a hellscape of a world that would be for anyone trying to run a service! Sentiment at the time was that we wished AOL would welcome third party clients but it was not their duty or obligation to do so. Likewise most people believed the third party clients were free to adapt to the changes. Both had the right to play cat/mouse as long as they wished. Beeper is making a very different argument: that the courts and/or law should force anyone exposing an endpoint to the internet to bend over backwards so third parties can use the endpoint too (for free) because that would be convenient for end users. That Beeper can decide, at its own discretion, what is or is not allowable for something that was never intended to allow third party access. Every company is almost by definition a monopolist with regard to its own products and services because even mostly equivalent things are still different in some way that could matter to a customer. It is all about where you draw the lines.

joshmanders 3y ago

Probably because while we're hackers at heart, we're also don't think that because a company is large and profitable we're entitled to their resources free of charge to sell to other people violating all of their terms of service.

colanderman 3y ago
I don't think Apple cares about the resource usage here. (Note that's not their argument, they argue that Beeper clients will bypass content protections.) The servers running iMessage, heck even the team supporting it, are probably a drop in the bucket for them. Apple's goal is for iMessage to remain an exclusive feature of their hardware. That exclusivity is what Beeper -- or an Apple-vended Android client, or RCS interoperability, or federation generally -- threatens. And -- it's exactly the proposition of, "to use our popular offering in market X, you must also purchase our offering in market Y" which is anticompetitive.
- shazzdeeds 3y ago
  Lots of platforms like gaming consoles have exclusive content where the same company is both the hardware/services owner and the content creator. What would be anticompetitive is they leveraged their position as an app platform to stunt other legitimate chat apps from gaining popularity. Beeper claims that’s what’s happening to them but their legitimacy is debatable.
asadotzler 3y ago
[flagged]

minerva23 3y ago

My devil's advocate for Apple is that iMessage is relatively free of spam because of the exclusive architecture tied to hardware. The issue isn't so much Beeper as it is the open the door to anyone on the Internet. I.e. Apple probably cares little about Beeper itself, and more about the risk of 3rd party software accessing its services/users. A good number of us have had to combat spam/abuse in our careers, and we're sympathetic to the plight.

colanderman 3y ago
This argument I'm sympathetic to. But I think it would sit a lot better with me if Apple were to produce an Android client. That it's a closed ecosystem doesn't bother me as much as that it's tied to their specific phone hardware. (I'd still prefer to see 3rd party clients as I appreciate the integration those can bring. But the hardware lock-in is particularly egregious.)
YPPH 3y ago
Does that stop you getting spam SMS messages?
wraptile 3y ago
iphones and imessages are incredibly easy to automate for spam. Today's free, grey and dark markets are often powered by real devices as it's easier to maintain than to reverse engineer and replicate. Usually real devices are mixed with automation code for best results (e.g. real devices generate fingerprints and sign stuff while code automates actions). Creating barrier to entry for spam definitely reduces it but we know for a fact that's not a very effective spam fighting strategy. I also think modern anti-spam tech is really good. My Samsung phone here is really good at blocking robo calls here in Thailand. In fact I handn't received one since my upgrade to S22. If Samsung can block robo calls and open protocols like federation and email can stop spam through simple tech and volunteer work then multibillion company with some of the best engineers surely can't find this that challenging right? So I find the spam argument for closing off iMessages not very convincing to say the least.
- turquoisevar 3y ago

awgneo 3y ago

I too thought this was "Hacker" News, where we found ways to break down barriers and expand access to services to the benefit of society. Apple is absolutely abusing their market position and we should all be finding ways to establish healthy, multi-platform communication standands. It is disheartening to see many folks here fighting for the status quo, which clearly isn't working. Beeper devs are the hackers I will always support, the kind that drive a subconscious shift of our morals to something more inclusive.

xvector 3y ago
How is Apple abusing their market position?
- meepmorp 3y ago
  Green bubbles, plus making iPhone using friends and family too lazy to install a 3rd party messaging app (accusations not valid outside of the continental US).
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    How is Apple to blame for the laziness of your family and friends? I've never seen Apple disencourage in any way third party messaging apps on their devices.
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      I wasn't being serious.
      - averageRoyalty 3y ago
        Oh my bad, that did not come across.
- tadfisher 3y ago
  They are tying one market (phone hardware) to another (their messaging network). Whether that rises to the level of "abuse" is up to you. I consider it so because of recent reports that 87% of US teens own iPhones, and colloquial knowledge of how "green bubbles" negatively affect teens' social and mental health.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

latexr 3y ago

This conversation has been had at length at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38576857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38576857 The top reply addresses your points: > The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use. > It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. Beeper’s CEO is acting high and mighty, speaking like he’s some kind of ideological liberator, while charging for a service using another’s infrastructure. Had it been free and open-source from the start¹ you’d see a lot more people on their side. As soon as you start charging, you lose a lot of “hacker” sympathy. It’s possible to disagree with Apple for not providing iMessage on Android while at the same time disagreeing with Beeper’s approach. ¹ And I do mean the whole app, not the proof-of-concept from the teenager.

ShamelessC 3y ago
Yeah honestly normally I’d probably support something like beeper, but they just give me bad vibes. They’re being painted as a scrappy startup but to me they seem like another bunch of get-rich-quick, move fast and break things “disruptor” types. Which, ironically, is what the hacker in hacker news has largely come to symbolize in my opinion. Apple has an established culture and history of not operating that way, to make matters worse. It’s “growth hacking” versus the only company that still understands polish, however monopolistic they may be.
- eredengrin 3y ago
  Beeper has been around since 2020 and its primary product (now called beeper cloud) is an all-in-one chat application which supports many protocols from the same client, not just imessage. Even if imessage/beeper mini is the product generating discussion right now, beeper cloud has been the primary focus of their company since the start and beeper mini is just a recent tangent. They use matrix bridges as the backend and some of the devs now working for beeper were already working on the open source bridges which beeper now uses even before beeper the company existed. Beeper was the first organization (and one of the few it seems) to become a corporate sponsor of the matrix foundation, and they also routinely sponsor developers to work on the open source bridges that make up much of their infrastructure, even beyond the ones they hired on as staff. I'm not sure how all this points to "get-rich-quick" silicon valley startup type to you but the behavior looks pretty different to me. Given their history, my guess is they put beeper mini out there primarily to put pressure on apple. If apple doesn't shut it down, cool, everyone has access to imessage through beeper. If apple does shut it down, at least it leaves little doubt about the situation: interoperability is not impossibly hard, apple really doesn't care about the security or privacy of their customers as much as they like to say they do, and at the end of the day imessage is only limited to apple devices because apple is apple. (For most companies I would say imessage is locked to apple devices because it's about the money but apple is one of those companies that takes weirdly principled positions even when it makes no sense, kind of similar to nintendo in that way.) I suppose if all I had seen was the past month of buzz around them then I might perceive them differently.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tinus_hn 3y ago

While obviously the true Hacker News opinion is ‘hurr durr Apple bad’. Beeper is requesting money for illegally distributing Apples copyrighted code which they then use in a questionable way. Cry me a river.

colanderman 3y ago
What "copyrighted code" are you referring to? Are you alleging that Beeper has stolen Apple's IP? I haven't read this anywhere.
- tinus_hn 3y ago
  They include a library from MacOS that makes it register: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38534247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38534247
  - modeless 3y ago
    That's why there's are exemptions to copyright for interoperability reasons. You can't hide behind copyrights (or trademarks) solely to exclude competitors. (I believe Beeper uses this library solely for registration, not normal operation.) Such tactics have lost in court multiple times.
    - tinus_hn 3y ago
      That’s a totally different kind of case where the barrier to interoperability is the ability to reproduce copyrighted content, like in the case of the DSMOS chip which contains a poem which has to be provided for the OS to work. These tactics have sometimes been successful and sometimes been unsuccessful. It’s just the legal lottery. Here they simply provide someone else’s library to perform the authentication. That’s just basic copyright infringement, however lofty the goal. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858511/what-is-com-apple-dont-steal-mac-os-x#858526 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858511/what-is-com-apple... https://www.theregister.com/2003/08/11/habeas_cans_spammer/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/08/11/habeas_cans_spammer/ You can’t write an emulator and sell it including the bios written by Sony. Has been enforced many times. Similarly, you can’t do what Beeper is doing here.

yaky 3y ago

Especially surprising since consolidating multiple messaging protocols under Matrix is literally Beeper's service, and has been for a few years. Several other comment mention "piggybacking", but there are plenty of services piggybacking on tech giants: SearX, Nitter, Invidious, Teddit, Libreddit. One can even argue that LineageOS and GrapheneOS are piggybacking on Google's efforts.

xenadu02 3y ago

Because most of us didn't think AOL was doing something illegal by blocking third party clients. AOL created the service and ran the servers. AOL was free to make it work however they liked. And we never tried to insist that AOL was legally liable for making any changes to their own protocol without notice or approval to third party clients - what a hellscape of a world that would be for anyone trying to run a service! Sentiment at the time was that we wished AOL would welcome third party clients but it was not their duty or obligation to do so. Likewise most people believed the third party clients were free to adapt to the changes. Both had the right to play cat/mouse as long as they wished. Beeper is making a very different argument: that the courts and/or law should force anyone exposing an endpoint to the internet to bend over backwards so third parties can use the endpoint too (for free) because that would be convenient for end users. That Beeper can decide, at its own discretion, what is or is not allowable for something that was never intended to allow third party access. Every company is almost by definition a monopolist with regard to its own products and services because even mostly equivalent things are still different in some way that could matter to a customer. It is all about where you draw the lines.