5 ms·

This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?

frumplestlatz 4mo ago
This is definitely going to get banned, and as a customer of Apple’s, I will be glad for it. I don’t need more iMessage spam.
- garygao 4mo ago
  We're not encouraging spam with this. We're mainly focused on existing conversational use cases that's currently done over SMS/RCS. They can be more human and expressive when done over iMessage.
  - dubcanada 4mo ago
    For iPhone only users, so right off the bat your product is targeting 50% ish of a companies customer base. And the non iMessage people get a worse experience?
    - garygao 4mo ago
      We have SMS/RCS fallback for non-iMessage devices. Also, in the verticals that we're targeting, the iMessage usage rate is a lot higher than 50%
    - allthetime 4mo ago
      In North America iPhone/android split is far from 50/50. I have 4 different apps running and the split is about 80/20 and has been for a decade. Internationally android is used at a higher rate - but that is decreasing as lesser economies play catch up.
      - dubcanada 4mo ago
        Not sure what bubble you live in, but that is incorrect. Maybe in California it's 80/20. Every single statistic globally is nearly 80/20% for android. There is a few rich markets and they may be 80/20 for Apple, but realistically Android wins every single time, no matter what market you look at. China/India are like 30-40% of the world, and they are both under 20% usage. Europe - 60/40% split for android US/Canada - 40/60% split for iPhone Even some of the higher countries are only 70/30% for iPhone. Ignoring that is fine if your target is rich North Americans. But you are still chopping off X% of customers.
        loumf 4mo ago
        Wins for "devices owned", but not necessarily for customers, which depends on the product/service. The OP has said they have fallback to SMS/RCS.
  - john_strinlai 4mo ago
    >We're not encouraging spam with this. what you encourage and what actually happens are two different things, though. gmail does not actively encourage spam, yet most spam emails i receive are from gmail addresses. you have to actively fight against malicious uses, like spam. "not encouraging" is nowhere near enough. what systems/processes/safeguards do you have in place to prevent abuse?
    - garygao 4mo ago
      I agree. We're not completely self-serve right now, so we get to talk with each potential customer and learn about their use case before onboarding them onto the platform. This way, we can prevent use cases that involve spam or abuse.
      - john_strinlai 4mo ago
        >We're not completely self-serve right now, "right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale. do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?
        garygao 4mo ago
        We do run checkups and keep very closely in touch with our customers. We don't plan to go self serve in the near future and will most likely still have a very personalized onboarding process.
  - aetch 4mo ago
    The last thing I want is an AI “thumbs up” or reaction over iMessage
rvz 4mo ago
That is the platform risk. Apple blocked Beeper.com for the same reason.
- garygao 4mo ago
  Apple doesn't inherently prohibit programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do that. What they are against is spam and abuse. Therefore, as long as we stay compliant and prevent spam, Apple is not necessarily against this.
  - frumplestlatz 4mo ago
    They developed AppleScript for people to do this individually, at limited scale. Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale. This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.
    - garygao 4mo ago
      People don't report our phone lines to be spam because the use cases that we focus on are either mostly inbound (e.g. customer service, the user is the one who texts first) or warm opt-in outbound (e.g. form-fill text back or follow ups). Businesses want a better medium to communicate with their users and users want something more conversational and native to their messaging behaviors.
      - frumplestlatz 4mo ago
        I genuinely can’t tell if this is naivety or willful ignorance, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse. They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered. You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.

This is definitely going to get banned, and as a customer of Apple’s, I will be glad for it. I don’t need more iMessage spam.

garygao 4mo ago
We're not encouraging spam with this. We're mainly focused on existing conversational use cases that's currently done over SMS/RCS. They can be more human and expressive when done over iMessage.
- dubcanada 4mo ago
  For iPhone only users, so right off the bat your product is targeting 50% ish of a companies customer base. And the non iMessage people get a worse experience?
  - garygao 4mo ago
    We have SMS/RCS fallback for non-iMessage devices. Also, in the verticals that we're targeting, the iMessage usage rate is a lot higher than 50%
  - allthetime 4mo ago
    In North America iPhone/android split is far from 50/50. I have 4 different apps running and the split is about 80/20 and has been for a decade. Internationally android is used at a higher rate - but that is decreasing as lesser economies play catch up.
    - dubcanada 4mo ago
      Not sure what bubble you live in, but that is incorrect. Maybe in California it's 80/20. Every single statistic globally is nearly 80/20% for android. There is a few rich markets and they may be 80/20 for Apple, but realistically Android wins every single time, no matter what market you look at. China/India are like 30-40% of the world, and they are both under 20% usage. Europe - 60/40% split for android US/Canada - 40/60% split for iPhone Even some of the higher countries are only 70/30% for iPhone. Ignoring that is fine if your target is rich North Americans. But you are still chopping off X% of customers.
      - loumf 4mo ago
        Wins for "devices owned", but not necessarily for customers, which depends on the product/service. The OP has said they have fallback to SMS/RCS.
- john_strinlai 4mo ago
  >We're not encouraging spam with this. what you encourage and what actually happens are two different things, though. gmail does not actively encourage spam, yet most spam emails i receive are from gmail addresses. you have to actively fight against malicious uses, like spam. "not encouraging" is nowhere near enough. what systems/processes/safeguards do you have in place to prevent abuse?
  - garygao 4mo ago
    I agree. We're not completely self-serve right now, so we get to talk with each potential customer and learn about their use case before onboarding them onto the platform. This way, we can prevent use cases that involve spam or abuse.
    - john_strinlai 4mo ago
      >We're not completely self-serve right now, "right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale. do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?
      - garygao 4mo ago
        We do run checkups and keep very closely in touch with our customers. We don't plan to go self serve in the near future and will most likely still have a very personalized onboarding process.
- aetch 4mo ago
  The last thing I want is an AI “thumbs up” or reaction over iMessage

rvz 4mo ago

That is the platform risk. Apple blocked Beeper.com for the same reason.

garygao 4mo ago
Apple doesn't inherently prohibit programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do that. What they are against is spam and abuse. Therefore, as long as we stay compliant and prevent spam, Apple is not necessarily against this.
- frumplestlatz 4mo ago
  They developed AppleScript for people to do this individually, at limited scale. Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale. This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.
  - garygao 4mo ago
    People don't report our phone lines to be spam because the use cases that we focus on are either mostly inbound (e.g. customer service, the user is the one who texts first) or warm opt-in outbound (e.g. form-fill text back or follow ups). Businesses want a better medium to communicate with their users and users want something more conversational and native to their messaging behaviors.
    - frumplestlatz 4mo ago
      I genuinely can’t tell if this is naivety or willful ignorance, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse. They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered. You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.