Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper's 'iMessage to Android' solution

- Step 1) use peer pressure to get teens on platform
  Step 2) vendor lock-in to keep them as lifetime customers
  Step 3) profit
- They would do that because they suddenly changed their mind about their strategy needing to keep things as proprietary as possible. It's unlikely, but apple did do that to a degree with osx
Not how capitalism works. Sadly
They specifically don't want to do this. They've admitted that they want peer pressure to support and bolster their iPhone sales.
It's super fucked up.

- I'm having a brain fart, what movie is this from again? I remember the scene but can't remember the movie
Your primary contribution to this conversation is to bitch about how no one engages with you? I see users responding to you but then all you are responding back with is editing your comment to say "thanks for answering"? Idk man... maybe it's your approach to dialogue. Being super dismissive and retaliatory tends to bring downvotes.
Oh no! You got downvoty wotied!
Now what? We gonna stop posting just because of a little red number? That's stupid.
- Cringe

Did Beeper clear its usage of the iMessage platform with Apple? Sign a contract? Get an SLA agreement with Apple in writing?

I was under the impression that they found essentially a back door/work around to latch into the iMessage platform… in that case this is no different than Cisco patching some routers or MS fixing a security hole. If anything I’d be more annoyed that Apple didn’t patch it quicker.

I’d love to be able to use iMessage with my android friends, but Beeper’s methods seemed sketchy as hell.

- While it's not mostly about security, and I generally agree that Apple's dickitry with regard to iMessage should end (they'd be doing a solid in the US to just release an Android client and monetize via sticker packs or something like it) there is most certainly a security risk for Apple to allow a reverse-engineering of their spec to spoof real iPhones, which is how Beeper works.:
  pypush is a POC demo of my recent iMessage reverse-engineering. It can currently register as a new device on an Apple ID, set up encryption keys, and send and receive iMessages!
  Now, your quote and the others in this thread:
  Beeper didn’t find a security hole, nothing was compromised for Apple.
  They sure as fuck did, lol. iMessage isn't public, it's not intended to be used by anyone other than Apple, and the bandwidth and servers are not free. Its not as if every iMessage isn't going through Apple's servers, they're paying for it. Though they didn't find a technical hole like a zero day or compromise iMessage for customers, they absolutely found a security concern for Apple. If you walk in to your house, find your neighbor there grabbing a couple of eggs out of the fridge and they hand wave away and say "don't worry I didn't break a window, I just figured out you keep a spare key under the mat and also I'm going to use these to make cookies for the block party and I'm not going to charge a lot for them and only you have these eggs from your chicken you're hogging them!" you'd kick them out in a hurry and probably call the cops.
  So two things:
  We can absolutely be mad at Apple for the lock in effect of iMessage, there were some leaked emails a while ago that confirm what we all know, this is just there to prevent buying your kid a cheap android phone. Personally, I think if Apple was serious about keeping their customers secure, they'd either release an Android client or better, just make sure that the minimum spec for RCS supports E2EE for wide adoption. They can still have a more robust platform with iMessage, and it's still going to integrate with Apple shit in a way that only they could do.
  Anyone, anywhere, who thought that this was a viable business for Beeper has lost their fucking minds. Their model was basically "trust me bro, we're going to socially pressure Apple and that's going to totally work" and while it sounds like they're back up for now, it will be extremely surprising if it stays that way longer than another week or two. It would be akin to someone launching a business being like "well, we didn't hack Microsoft/Google/Facebook, but we're planning on hosting a bajillion users on their backend for free without their approval."
It was an exploit that mimicked the device as apple hardware, but it wasent sketchy. Everything was still e2ee, with beeper having no access to any data.
It was the exact opposite of what the Nothing "middleman" did that was actually sketchy.
- It was an exploit
  ...
  but it wasent sketchy
  Ah yes, businesses based on exploits. Very not sketchy.
I've only heard this particular stance from iPhone users.
Apple has done a stellar job propagandizing their brand as the "Good guys... just looking out for their customer's best interests, is all".
No evidence for this take whatsoever; it's just naked, gullible brand loyalty.
Kind of an amazing phenomenon, if it weren't so sad.
- I’ve got both. iOS for work, android for personal use. I’m in DevSecOps and therefore tend to see everything from this sort of mindset. Apple didn’t make a deal with them, they don’t have an open standard. It’s proprietary, it’s locked down. Why would any company with that sort of a product allow another company to interface with their offerings without paying for it? Even if it’s nice and secure, this will add load to the iMessage servers that people aren’t paying Apple for. It could introduce errors/issues they never tested for because they have a closed ecosystem and only have to test with their own devices, a known quantity. It could even increase potential attack vectors.
  If you offered wifi to your friends via a guest network and then someone figured out how to connect their whole neighborhood to it, would you be fine with that?
What's the choice? Apple isn't going to license it for all the tea in China.
It's entirely different in that it was not a vulnerability or exploit of any kind and actually improved the security of Apple's users.

Large bodies of people (Congress) cam do multiple things at once. Chill your biscuits
Edit: thongs -> things
- That typo 🤝 Your username
Also why is no one saving the whales?!!
Yeah, how can they discuss two (2!) subjects at the same time over there??? I don't even have strong opinions one way or the other but had to call out your lazy whataboutism.
Oh she's in a blue bubble alright
(Couldn't resist this joke, I don't give a shit really)

Honestly it's hard to see how messages don't fall under the protection of net neutrality.

I mean they do, but that doesn't mean a message platform can't platform lock itself.
The ISP isn't discriminating.. that's net neutrality.
I think you might be a bit confused.
- It just feels like users being restricted to not having any incoming or outgoing communication across operating systems is discriminating. The reason Beeper's previous and current solutions stopped working is because they started blocking it. If Apple had successfully built a protocol that couldn't be accessed by Android devices then that would be one thing, but they failed to do that and now they're discriminating against otherwise valid connections.
Net neutrality effectively ending under Trump might clear it up
- Ah, you're right, the reimplementation of some of the old rules was voted to pass in October 2023 so it's probably still in the works. Damn.
  Wow, think about that for a moment. ISPs could be controlling everything we see and don't see right at this moment. Kind of fucked.

I have such a love/hate relationship with my senator.

She basically brought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into existence, which helps TONS of people not get fucked over by banks and stuff
Simultaneously, she tends to support corporatist stuff a frustrating amount of the time, and (similar to how Feinstein was, but not quite as bad) doesn’t really know what she’s talking about when it comes to tech and the nuances involved

Edit: to be clear, this isn’t me doing a “hail corporate” and saying Apple is categorically in the right here - simply that there are a LOT more technical complexities going on here than the (reductive) statement Warren made seems to indicate

Get the fuck out of here with your nuance. You have no business being on the internet.
/s (in case it isn’t obvious)

To make the phone and messaging market more competitive. It may not affect you but it does affect most android users.
Also maybe she has an android, idk
Messaging interoperability between the two major mobile platforms greatly affects communication for those of us who have friends and family on the other platform. Cross-platform messaging allows us to communicate no matter which platform the friend or family member happened to buy. Blocking this feature is anti-competitive and detrimental to communication.
The entire purpose of government is to help make society better for all of its members. Some government representatives may decide that 'better for society' would be to allow the corporation to maximize profit even if it harms the consumer. This particular politician believes that society would benefit from this interoperability and that the company may be overstepping anti-competitive monopoly boundaries by blocking it.
Whether you agree with the idea or not, and whether it affects you personally or not is immaterial. It affects society at large and the government is supposed to represent members of its society.
It's nice that you either don't use SMS or all of your family/friends are on Android, or you simply don't have family/friends, but for the rest of us, we would like to send pictures to our grandma without her complaining that it's pixelated and tiny because she has an iPhone. It has been frustrating for years, but now that a solution has been realized, it seems anti-competitive that one of the vendors is now trying to block the fix. Regardless, even if this fix remains blocked, we do have hope that iOS will get RCS in the near future.
- Signal is great. E2ee multiplatform messaging. Everybody’s happy.
It’s not a messaging thing it’s an anti-trust thing. And for all the times I agree with Warren, I think she’s wrong here.
Instead they should force any phone manufacturer to integrate matrix in the SMS app, that would really benefit the user most…

Apple is a private company what business does the gov have here?

The US is not a libertarian society. Private businesses play within the guardrails set by the people and their elected representatives.
Ever heard of anti-trust?
Companies and Corporations are a creation of the government. The government creates the rules and legal structures that makes their existence possible. Without the government to create corporations there would only be individuals doing business. The individual would be personally responsible for any harm the business may cause.
Corporations take that responsibility away from the owners. But it doesn't disappear. In effect, the behavior of corporations are now the responsibility of the government. Much like the actions of a child are the responsibility of the parent.
So to answer your question, the government as all the business of regulating Apple, and making sure they do the right thing.
Sovereignty over territory Apple chose to conduct business in.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Warren, an advocate for stricter antitrust enforcement, posted her support for Beeper on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple would restrict a competitor.

In explaining its decision to cut off Beeper’s access to its servers, Apple said that it took “steps to steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.” It also suggested that Beeper’s techniques “posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.”

In addition, Cupertino-based tech giant argued against Beeper’s security, saying it was not able to verify that messages sent through unauthorized means were able to maintain the end-to-end encryption iMessage offers.

Beeper, however, claims it was able to offer the same level of encryption as iMessage uses, but did not put its app through a third-party security audit prior to its launch, which would have strengthened its argument.

As of its most recent update on Sunday, the startup posted that work continues on the outage and it hopes to “have good news to share soon.”

Beeper Mini, then, became an app that focused solely on bringing iMessage to Android for $1.99/month, with the intention of expanding its capabilities over time.

The original article contains 474 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Who the hell uses iMessage? Do some people really only have friends with apple phones?

iPhones have the largest share of the US smartphone market. iMessage is the default messaging app on every iPhone, and cannot be changed. Ergo, iMessage is one of the top 5 largest messaging apps in the US. I believe it's number 3 or 4 behind FB Messenger, WhatsApp, and FaceTime (also an Apple product).
- Yo.
This is largely a North American problem. More than 50% of phones are iPhone, and the de facto texting for iPhone users is iMessage. While WhatsApp is the default IM for most of the rest of the world, it's iMessage in North America.
- I'm so annoyed by people dismissing a standard protocol for sending messages builtin to phones and the networks they run on as unnecessary. We should have choice, but why in the fuck should we not have the most basic fucking infrastructure already in place that works with every device and without needing a new account/ app and needing to wrangle people we know into using the that app? I truly don't get why people seem against a fucking standard just because they found a workaround for not having one
iMessage is VERY popular in the Us.
- Yes, apprently. I didn't know that. I think less then 10% of the people I know have iPhones. It's all Android.
Over 50% in the US. And under 30 it's something insane like 75%
- deleted
In the US, iMessage is really popular.
Yes. Most of my family / peers have iPhones. So iMessage is the standard for them. We use signal for the rest.
I'd assume some people use it when it's available and just use regular texts or something like Signal for non apple contacts.
I'd be really surprised if anyone only uses it and just never talks to anyone with an android...
- Like RCS, iMessage falls back to SMS / MMS (aka “green bubbles”) if iMessage isn’t available.
  People still talk cross-platform, but people dislike the drop in media quality / functionality when they get kicked to the old protocol.
Yawn.