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.
(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.)
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.
You lost me here. iMessages in particular are not able to be automated because they always require user input before they’re sent.
There are very few OS processes that have an escalated privilege which allows sending iMessage without user input, but given the lack of widespread iMessage spam vs. SMS spam, it seems those processes aren’t actively being exploited.
Even iPhones in general are actually very hard to automate.
So honestly I have no clue what you’re talking about.