11 ms·

Department of Justice and FTC Looking into Beeper iMessage Controversy

51 points by my12parsecs 3y ago

kramerger 3y ago
[flagged]
xcdzvyn 3y ago
As burning as my desire has been to write a powerful native Discord client has been for the last {years:?}, I have trouble justifying the position that companies should be obliged to provide anybody a service. It reminds me of something Moxie said[0] a few years ago, regarding Signal forks: > I'm not OK with LibreSignal using our servers, and I'm not OK with LibreSignal using the name "Signal." You're free to use our source code for whatever you would like under the terms of the license, but you're not entitled to use our name or the service that we run. > If you think running servers is difficult and expensive (you're right), ask yourself why you feel entitled for us to run them for your product. It's not nice, but I can't say it isn't true. [0] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
- zug_zug 3y ago
  Well -- I'm not. I think it's almost an intuitive tenant of non-monopoly -- interoperability. Also, in practice, I think maybe less than 10% of this site doesn't believe that enshitification is real. Forcing interoperability via open-api standards is the only practical solution I can see to enshitificatin. Such as: any client can call imessage and register a webhook to receieve messages at or download messages if it has username, email, 2-factor token, etc. Or such as any user can access reddit/facebook/whatever with any client and can export their data to a competitor. (I'm an iphone user for the record, not that it matters)
  - lolinder 3y ago
    > I think it's almost an intuitive tenant of non-monopoly -- interoperability. Interoperability with printer cartridges and game console controllers is different than mandated always-on servers. In the former cases the only cost to the OG business is the opportunity cost of losing customers, and yes, that's just intuitively anti-monopoly rules. But what is being considered here is the idea that a company should be obliged to allow another business to send them large amounts of traffic without paying anything, while simultaneously charging their own users for access to the original company's servers. This case is much less clear cut: you're essentially saying that, in the name of interoperability, any business that runs a platform is obliged to support some indeterminate number of other businesses at their own expense. If you mandated interoperability but allowed charging the other businesses for server access, that would be a step in the right direction, but you're still mandating that the original business engage in a business relationship that they would rather not engage in. Still very much less clear cut than the hardware cases.
    - MadnessASAP 3y ago
      I don't think companies are obliged to provide free unlimited access to anything at their expense. However a foundation of the internet is client agnosticism. That is the service does not care what software or hardware the consumer is running, only that they are authorized to access the service. Unfortunately Apple and a great many other companies have chosen (for almost universally anti-consumer reasons) to restrict the client *ware. Unfortunately for Apple et al. digitql information does not intrinsically reveal the origin of itself and so long as a given piece of software can present the right bits in the right order they can make use of the service. It's a useless game that runs against the whole idea of the internet. If someone wishes to charge for a service thats quite alright, if they wish to publish a terms of use that prohibits certain behaviours on their service (spam) that's also quite alright. If they want to restrict access to only certain clients, they're legally allowed too, just don't expect everyone else to voluntarily go along with it.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        > If they want to restrict access to only certain clients, they're legally allowed too, just don't expect everyone else to voluntarily go along with it. This thread is on an article discussing how the FTC and DoJ are investigating whether Apple should be legally allowed to attempt to lock out other clients. It's no longer a question of whether everyone should voluntarily go along with it, it's being escalated.
  - junofan 3y ago
    I’ve dealt with enshittification by buying Apple products. Enshittification is a property of two-sided marketplaces. Meanwhile, Apple mostly just sells to customers. Thus my phones and laptops have gotten better over the years. I’m perfectly fine with them not selling services and exporting my data to other messaging providers.
    - zug_zug 3y ago
      I'm not. It's anti-consumer that I don't have free access to all my data in apple. If google wants to make a "migrate all imessages and your cloud to us" service, I think it's textbook anticompetitive behavior that they prevent that. When companies are forced to compete the consumer wins. Right now, the lazy crappy entrenched entities (google, reddit, X, meta) are getting worse and worse because they have made manipulated the system to prevent you from accessing your own information through alternative clients.
      - saurik 3y ago
        As much as I hate Apple and think they are in the wrong on this Beeper thing, Apple 100% allows you full access to your iMessages data: it isn't canonically stored in their cloud in the first place, and if you merely take a local backup of your phone using iTunes all of your data is trivially accessible (and thereby visible to software you run on your computer that could read the backup and import your message history into something else... though, like, the premise of uploading your message history -- something which should inherently be local and owned by the user -- to Google -- who certainly wouldn't encrypt it -- squicks me).
- striking 3y ago
  What about those of us who are actually allowed access to the network as a result of owning Apple hardware? Discord and Signal don't charge money so it's much harder for me to feel a sense of entitlement to use a third party client with them, but I paid Apple for the privilege to use their service. These devices cost serious money. Why do I see my friends getting kicked off of iMessage, with their Apple IDs getting locked, for attempting to use the network with different hardware or OSes? Apple knows the advantage they have as a result of iMessage. They know that this drives people to buy their products and not switch away. This is beyond some sort of kindness to network operators (I'm sure the marginal cost of iMessage is tiny), it's monopolistic behavior.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    If you were a member of a monthly-subscription social network, would you feel entitled to your friends being allowed on for free? Should a gym be forced to allow you to bring friends? Surely you'd enjoy it more if you could exercise with your buddies, so what right do they have to insist that your buddies get their own memberships?
    - striking 3y ago
      But that's not even my problem with it. I have a real iPhone, I have a real Mac. Why can't I get my messages from Apple using friends in a secure way on my Pixel without serious hackery?
      - chongli 3y ago
        You can: with Signal. It runs on both iOS and Android. No one in this thread so far as adequately demonstrated why Apple should be forced to provide a free service — at their own expense — to non-customers. Has any company ever been forced to do that?
        mashmac2 3y ago
        Lots of companies have been forced to do provide free services to non-customers; consider almost any industry classified as a 'utility'. The question here is 'are message platforms a thing that should be classified and regulated as if it were a utility?' For me, the answer is clearly no; there are plenty of communication platforms that can be used freely with interoperability (e.g. email). And, as you note, there are lots of interoperable options.
- ilaksh 3y ago
  That's not the issue. They have a monopoly on phones that show high social status in many areas, and they use anticompetitive practices to protect it. Including deliberately ensuring that their messaging systems are not compatible with Android. Beeper is just one example of that.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangus 3y ago
    I would also remind people that you don’t have to have a pure monopoly to do things that are illegally anti-competitive. E.g., as I recall, a company can’t explicitly state their reason for acquiring a company being to reduce competition. Certainly it happens all the time but you can’t come out and say it on the record. (I don’t know if this issue is something that is illegal or not)
  - mikhailt 3y ago
    > Including deliberately ensuring that their messaging systems are not compatible with Android. That's not anticompetitive, messaging systems are not entitled/obligated to be interoperable in US. Apple is within its right to set standards for its networks/services that are restricted to their customers. That means they can restrict access all they want. That's why Twitter and Reddit is getting away with all the BS they've done in the past year or so by restricting APIs and charging high prices for them. If we want all services to be interoperable, then we have to start by passing regulations just like EU just did with DMA (without small company restrictions since Messages is likely to be exempt due to low usage in EU).
- lukeschlather 3y ago
  I think the biggest issue here is that Apple seems to be deliberately undermining SMS, which is an open standard. Now don't get me wrong, SMS is a terrible standard in several ways, but they seem to have built a service where they pretend to fix SMS, and they do it in a way that makes it basically impossible to actually fix the SMS standard. That said, I am beginning to think that companies of Apple's size should be required to offer interoperability with their network. I don't think they should be forced to do it for free, but Beeper charges $10/month and Apple's fee probably should be low enough that Beeper is only paying at most 10% to Apple. (Of course, Apple could offer their own third-party client if they want to compete.)
  - mikhailt 3y ago
    > I think the biggest issue here is that Apple seems to be deliberately undermining SMS, which is an open standard Are you confusing SMS with RCS? Apple hasn't done anything to undermine SMS. Remember, bubbles is not part of SMS, so Apple choosing different colors for each service is not them undermining anything. Apple has announced RCS support next year for iMessages.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Making Messages+iMessage the default on their platform whilst also prohibiting competitor apps to serve as the SMS/MMS/RCS client feels like anti-trust to me. Especially as their market share among some demographics approaches 90%.
      - mikhailt 3y ago
        > Making Messages+iMessage the default on their platform whilst also prohibiting competitor apps to serve as the SMS/MMS/RCS client feels like anti-trust to me. Especially as their market share among some demographics approaches 90%. I agree with that part, no company should be allowed to set defaults without the ability to change the defaults. That's not related to SMS though, that's a much larger problem that Apple (and MS) should be forced to change. I also think platform vendors should not be allowed to spam users about the said defaults either like how MS is forcing users to go through ads and so on whenever they search for Chrome to install and change to it as default.
- xg15 3y ago
  I'd disagree with both Apple and Moxie here and say, yes, for messages or anything else that induces a network effect, interop should be mandatory. The thing is that I can't choose freely which messenger I want to use like I could with other services: I'm restricted by which messengers the people I want/have to talk to actually use. So yeah, build your walled gardens if you have to, but then don't force me into them. Of course forcing people into their walled gardens is something Apple's leadership is very much interested in, as evidenced by the "don't make it too easy for an iPhone family to buy their kid an Android phone" email.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    It’s not clear that Apple is forcing you to do anything. Much like a tip in a tipping culture, any shame or pressure you feel from a network effect is your own. This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things.
    - truthspeaker_1 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - close04 3y ago
      Interoperability is great though. You can talk with anyone without having to install yet another client or wonder what the other party is using. That’s why SMS is still used despite being godawful. So opening the standard is great. The question is how will it work and how will the other parties guarantee the level of service. How do they deal with spam for example? Do they build their own network or do they use Apple’s? If Apple is forced to open up does it mean they’re forced to give access to any of their infrastructure? Can they charge or will there be a price cap? Who drives the evolution of the standard? The details matter more than the principle in this case because on principle you could just end up giving everyone a crappier service.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
- VincentEvans 3y ago
  I think someone is deliberately (?) confusing standards and interoperability with service and capacity to suit their argument. If interoperability is standardized - I can run my own servers.
- joecool1029 3y ago
  > If you think running servers is difficult and expensive (you're right), ask yourself why you feel entitled for us to run them for your product. He also doesn't want to federate the service to reduce their own server cost. There was a brief time its immediate predecessor Textsecure federated with cyanogenmod: https://signal.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/ https://signal.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/ His more recent comments on federation: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ Also, maybe don't choose to freely license client software and stick to review-only licensing if your intent is to run a closed service where you don't want other clients? I think a lot of people were rubbed the wrong way about the branding/licensing (Open Whisper Systems/AGPL) vs. what it ended up being. You don't see closed services like Telegram complaining about modified freely licensed clients.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  If you have the talent to write a discord client, then may I suggest to you writing client and server software to bring discord features to Mumble? Just an idea. Easy image embedding in messages, camera and screen sharing, namely.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  TBH I think after a company has reached a certain size, it's not an issue to expect multi-platform compatibility. This really is a place where the rules for the top of market can, and probably should be stricter. These companies would have enough money to eat the expense with this.
- pieresqi 3y ago
  [dead]
jdalgetty 3y ago
Nothing will happen.
- truthspeaker_1 3y ago
  [flagged]
truthspeaker_1 3y ago
Anyone who is arguing that Apple is right in withholding iMessage misses the point of the article, that the FTC is investigating that in itself. Whether a company can keep a messaging platform closed off after it has crossed a majority market share.

51 points by my12parsecs 3y ago

[flagged]

As burning as my desire has been to write a powerful native Discord client has been for the last {years:?}, I have trouble justifying the position that companies should be obliged to provide anybody a service. It reminds me of something Moxie said[0] a few years ago, regarding Signal forks: > I'm not OK with LibreSignal using our servers, and I'm not OK with LibreSignal using the name "Signal." You're free to use our source code for whatever you would like under the terms of the license, but you're not entitled to use our name or the service that we run. > If you think running servers is difficult and expensive (you're right), ask yourself why you feel entitled for us to run them for your product. It's not nice, but I can't say it isn't true. [0] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

zug_zug 3y ago
Well -- I'm not. I think it's almost an intuitive tenant of non-monopoly -- interoperability. Also, in practice, I think maybe less than 10% of this site doesn't believe that enshitification is real. Forcing interoperability via open-api standards is the only practical solution I can see to enshitificatin. Such as: any client can call imessage and register a webhook to receieve messages at or download messages if it has username, email, 2-factor token, etc. Or such as any user can access reddit/facebook/whatever with any client and can export their data to a competitor. (I'm an iphone user for the record, not that it matters)
- lolinder 3y ago
  > I think it's almost an intuitive tenant of non-monopoly -- interoperability. Interoperability with printer cartridges and game console controllers is different than mandated always-on servers. In the former cases the only cost to the OG business is the opportunity cost of losing customers, and yes, that's just intuitively anti-monopoly rules. But what is being considered here is the idea that a company should be obliged to allow another business to send them large amounts of traffic without paying anything, while simultaneously charging their own users for access to the original company's servers. This case is much less clear cut: you're essentially saying that, in the name of interoperability, any business that runs a platform is obliged to support some indeterminate number of other businesses at their own expense. If you mandated interoperability but allowed charging the other businesses for server access, that would be a step in the right direction, but you're still mandating that the original business engage in a business relationship that they would rather not engage in. Still very much less clear cut than the hardware cases.
  - MadnessASAP 3y ago
    I don't think companies are obliged to provide free unlimited access to anything at their expense. However a foundation of the internet is client agnosticism. That is the service does not care what software or hardware the consumer is running, only that they are authorized to access the service. Unfortunately Apple and a great many other companies have chosen (for almost universally anti-consumer reasons) to restrict the client *ware. Unfortunately for Apple et al. digitql information does not intrinsically reveal the origin of itself and so long as a given piece of software can present the right bits in the right order they can make use of the service. It's a useless game that runs against the whole idea of the internet. If someone wishes to charge for a service thats quite alright, if they wish to publish a terms of use that prohibits certain behaviours on their service (spam) that's also quite alright. If they want to restrict access to only certain clients, they're legally allowed too, just don't expect everyone else to voluntarily go along with it.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      > If they want to restrict access to only certain clients, they're legally allowed too, just don't expect everyone else to voluntarily go along with it. This thread is on an article discussing how the FTC and DoJ are investigating whether Apple should be legally allowed to attempt to lock out other clients. It's no longer a question of whether everyone should voluntarily go along with it, it's being escalated.
- junofan 3y ago
  I’ve dealt with enshittification by buying Apple products. Enshittification is a property of two-sided marketplaces. Meanwhile, Apple mostly just sells to customers. Thus my phones and laptops have gotten better over the years. I’m perfectly fine with them not selling services and exporting my data to other messaging providers.
  - zug_zug 3y ago
    I'm not. It's anti-consumer that I don't have free access to all my data in apple. If google wants to make a "migrate all imessages and your cloud to us" service, I think it's textbook anticompetitive behavior that they prevent that. When companies are forced to compete the consumer wins. Right now, the lazy crappy entrenched entities (google, reddit, X, meta) are getting worse and worse because they have made manipulated the system to prevent you from accessing your own information through alternative clients.
    - saurik 3y ago
      As much as I hate Apple and think they are in the wrong on this Beeper thing, Apple 100% allows you full access to your iMessages data: it isn't canonically stored in their cloud in the first place, and if you merely take a local backup of your phone using iTunes all of your data is trivially accessible (and thereby visible to software you run on your computer that could read the backup and import your message history into something else... though, like, the premise of uploading your message history -- something which should inherently be local and owned by the user -- to Google -- who certainly wouldn't encrypt it -- squicks me).
striking 3y ago
What about those of us who are actually allowed access to the network as a result of owning Apple hardware? Discord and Signal don't charge money so it's much harder for me to feel a sense of entitlement to use a third party client with them, but I paid Apple for the privilege to use their service. These devices cost serious money. Why do I see my friends getting kicked off of iMessage, with their Apple IDs getting locked, for attempting to use the network with different hardware or OSes? Apple knows the advantage they have as a result of iMessage. They know that this drives people to buy their products and not switch away. This is beyond some sort of kindness to network operators (I'm sure the marginal cost of iMessage is tiny), it's monopolistic behavior.
- lolinder 3y ago
  If you were a member of a monthly-subscription social network, would you feel entitled to your friends being allowed on for free? Should a gym be forced to allow you to bring friends? Surely you'd enjoy it more if you could exercise with your buddies, so what right do they have to insist that your buddies get their own memberships?
  - striking 3y ago
    But that's not even my problem with it. I have a real iPhone, I have a real Mac. Why can't I get my messages from Apple using friends in a secure way on my Pixel without serious hackery?
    - chongli 3y ago
      You can: with Signal. It runs on both iOS and Android. No one in this thread so far as adequately demonstrated why Apple should be forced to provide a free service — at their own expense — to non-customers. Has any company ever been forced to do that?
      - mashmac2 3y ago
        Lots of companies have been forced to do provide free services to non-customers; consider almost any industry classified as a 'utility'. The question here is 'are message platforms a thing that should be classified and regulated as if it were a utility?' For me, the answer is clearly no; there are plenty of communication platforms that can be used freely with interoperability (e.g. email). And, as you note, there are lots of interoperable options.
ilaksh 3y ago
That's not the issue. They have a monopoly on phones that show high social status in many areas, and they use anticompetitive practices to protect it. Including deliberately ensuring that their messaging systems are not compatible with Android. Beeper is just one example of that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dangus 3y ago
  I would also remind people that you don’t have to have a pure monopoly to do things that are illegally anti-competitive. E.g., as I recall, a company can’t explicitly state their reason for acquiring a company being to reduce competition. Certainly it happens all the time but you can’t come out and say it on the record. (I don’t know if this issue is something that is illegal or not)
- mikhailt 3y ago
  > Including deliberately ensuring that their messaging systems are not compatible with Android. That's not anticompetitive, messaging systems are not entitled/obligated to be interoperable in US. Apple is within its right to set standards for its networks/services that are restricted to their customers. That means they can restrict access all they want. That's why Twitter and Reddit is getting away with all the BS they've done in the past year or so by restricting APIs and charging high prices for them. If we want all services to be interoperable, then we have to start by passing regulations just like EU just did with DMA (without small company restrictions since Messages is likely to be exempt due to low usage in EU).
lukeschlather 3y ago
I think the biggest issue here is that Apple seems to be deliberately undermining SMS, which is an open standard. Now don't get me wrong, SMS is a terrible standard in several ways, but they seem to have built a service where they pretend to fix SMS, and they do it in a way that makes it basically impossible to actually fix the SMS standard. That said, I am beginning to think that companies of Apple's size should be required to offer interoperability with their network. I don't think they should be forced to do it for free, but Beeper charges $10/month and Apple's fee probably should be low enough that Beeper is only paying at most 10% to Apple. (Of course, Apple could offer their own third-party client if they want to compete.)
- mikhailt 3y ago
  > I think the biggest issue here is that Apple seems to be deliberately undermining SMS, which is an open standard Are you confusing SMS with RCS? Apple hasn't done anything to undermine SMS. Remember, bubbles is not part of SMS, so Apple choosing different colors for each service is not them undermining anything. Apple has announced RCS support next year for iMessages.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Making Messages+iMessage the default on their platform whilst also prohibiting competitor apps to serve as the SMS/MMS/RCS client feels like anti-trust to me. Especially as their market share among some demographics approaches 90%.
    - mikhailt 3y ago
      > Making Messages+iMessage the default on their platform whilst also prohibiting competitor apps to serve as the SMS/MMS/RCS client feels like anti-trust to me. Especially as their market share among some demographics approaches 90%. I agree with that part, no company should be allowed to set defaults without the ability to change the defaults. That's not related to SMS though, that's a much larger problem that Apple (and MS) should be forced to change. I also think platform vendors should not be allowed to spam users about the said defaults either like how MS is forcing users to go through ads and so on whenever they search for Chrome to install and change to it as default.
xg15 3y ago
I'd disagree with both Apple and Moxie here and say, yes, for messages or anything else that induces a network effect, interop should be mandatory. The thing is that I can't choose freely which messenger I want to use like I could with other services: I'm restricted by which messengers the people I want/have to talk to actually use. So yeah, build your walled gardens if you have to, but then don't force me into them. Of course forcing people into their walled gardens is something Apple's leadership is very much interested in, as evidenced by the "don't make it too easy for an iPhone family to buy their kid an Android phone" email.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  It’s not clear that Apple is forcing you to do anything. Much like a tip in a tipping culture, any shame or pressure you feel from a network effect is your own. This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things.
  - truthspeaker_1 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - close04 3y ago
    Interoperability is great though. You can talk with anyone without having to install yet another client or wonder what the other party is using. That’s why SMS is still used despite being godawful. So opening the standard is great. The question is how will it work and how will the other parties guarantee the level of service. How do they deal with spam for example? Do they build their own network or do they use Apple’s? If Apple is forced to open up does it mean they’re forced to give access to any of their infrastructure? Can they charge or will there be a price cap? Who drives the evolution of the standard? The details matter more than the principle in this case because on principle you could just end up giving everyone a crappier service.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
VincentEvans 3y ago
I think someone is deliberately (?) confusing standards and interoperability with service and capacity to suit their argument. If interoperability is standardized - I can run my own servers.
joecool1029 3y ago
> If you think running servers is difficult and expensive (you're right), ask yourself why you feel entitled for us to run them for your product. He also doesn't want to federate the service to reduce their own server cost. There was a brief time its immediate predecessor Textsecure federated with cyanogenmod: https://signal.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/ https://signal.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/ His more recent comments on federation: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ Also, maybe don't choose to freely license client software and stick to review-only licensing if your intent is to run a closed service where you don't want other clients? I think a lot of people were rubbed the wrong way about the branding/licensing (Open Whisper Systems/AGPL) vs. what it ended up being. You don't see closed services like Telegram complaining about modified freely licensed clients.
unethical_ban 3y ago
If you have the talent to write a discord client, then may I suggest to you writing client and server software to bring discord features to Mumble? Just an idea. Easy image embedding in messages, camera and screen sharing, namely.
aaomidi 3y ago
TBH I think after a company has reached a certain size, it's not an issue to expect multi-platform compatibility. This really is a place where the rules for the top of market can, and probably should be stricter. These companies would have enough money to eat the expense with this.
pieresqi 3y ago
[dead]

jdalgetty 3y ago

Nothing will happen.

truthspeaker_1 3y ago
[flagged]

truthspeaker_1 3y ago

Anyone who is arguing that Apple is right in withholding iMessage misses the point of the article, that the FTC is investigating that in itself. Whether a company can keep a messaging platform closed off after it has crossed a majority market share.