Department of Justice and FTC Looking into Beeper iMessage Controversy | Hacker News Reader

Department of Justice and FTC Looking into Beeper iMessage Controversy

macrumors.com

51 pointsmy12parsecs89 comments

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#issueco...

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)

> 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.

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.

> 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.

Sorry yes, was still working through my morning coffee and I had exceeded my token window by the end.

No one is obligating Apple to be the only party that runs iMessage always-on servers. That's a decision that's wholly of their own making.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

Lots of companies have been forced to do provide free services to non-customers; consider almost any industry classified as a 'utility'.

Since when is any utility service free? Electricity, water, phone service. All of these require payment for service. For electricity you have to pay for both generation (from your chosen generator) and for transmission on the wires to your house. For water you have to pay for all water and sewage service to your house. For phone service you have to pay your provider. If you roam outside of their network they have to pay the other network to carry your traffic (and then it’s up to your provider to decide how to charge you for roaming).

Edit: I should add that email is an example of a service which is not a utility. Why? Email providers are free to block any message they like, preventing delivery in either direction. They typically use this discretion to filter spam but they're under no obligation to deliver. Anyone who has set up their own email server will know what I'm talking about: you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get your emails delivered to Gmail users!

> Lots of companies have been forced to do provide free services to non-customers; consider almost any industry classified as a 'utility'.

Where do you live?

Essential services or utilities are NOT free in United States. Everyone has to pay for water, heat, gas, etc. There's no free access to it.

Why should Apple be in the business of providing a proprietary messaging service when many alternatives already exist in the market like you said.

The clear reason why they are bundling this service with their existing products at a loss is to expand their market share at the expense of interoperability.

This bundling is clearly an antitrust issue, I have a hard time believing all these arguments defending the wealthiest corporation on Earth aren’t being deliberately obtuse.

It's not an antitrust issue because Apple is not a monopoly. They have minority marketshare in all of the markets they operate.

It's because of the bundling / capture with SMS. If they drop SMS from iMessage and make it clear to end users they are using a separate messaging service not part of their phone plan then there is no case. As long as they combine iMessage with the open standard SMS then it can be argued from a variety of anti-competitive angles. They have used SMS to gain users for iMessage and that's similar to the bundling of IE back in the 90s.

IE was a problem because Microsoft had monopoly marketshare (95% of PC sales included Windows back then). Apple does not have a monopoly. iPhones aren’t even half of all phone sales.

Counterpoint Research shows Apple at 53% of smartphone shipments in the U.S. during Q2 2022 - Q3 2023:

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/us-smartphone-...

That market share is certainly enough to warrant FTC regulation. The FTC investigates anticompetitive activity even when the perpetrator is not a monopoly.

While Microsoft had a higher market share, Windows never prevented users from installing a third-party web browser. On the other hand, Apple is actively blocking third-party SMS/MMS clients from iOS via its App Store restrictions. This factor makes it more likely that Apple will be regulated despite iOS currently having a lower market share than Windows during Microsoft's antitrust trial.

The App Store is a separate issue. If you want to talk about opening that up, I'm game.

The issue here is the iMessage service. Throughout this thread, I have not seen anyone give a single example from US history (monopoly or otherwise) where a company has been forced to provide free access to a service -- at their own expense -- to the customers of their competitors. It's unprecedented!

It's just like airport VIP lounges. Should an airline that offers free VIP lounge access for their business and first class ticket-holders be forced to allow customers of competitor airlines to use their VIP lounge for free? After all, you can meet people in a VIP lounge so there are networking effects. Yet it really doesn't seem right that an airline who built and maintains a VIP lounge at their own expense (rental space in an airport is NOT CHEAP) should be forced to give away access to that space for free to competitors' customers.

How is the iMessage case any different?

Edit: I should also add that I bet Apple can produce a TON of data from usage patterns to show that iMessage in no way harms competitive messaging products on iPhones. Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, Snapchat, and countless other messaging products are doing just fine on the iPhone, so I doubt the "bundling" argument holds any water. As for how iMessage affects the Android market? Since when is it against the law to add free features/services to your products in order to distinguish them from your competitors' offerings?

Microsoft lost their antitrust case over IE because they harmed Netscape's browser business on Windows. Bundling IE with Windows had no affect on the Mac/Linux/Unix business and the case was never about that.

It is obviously absurd to compare messaging protocols to airline lounges. Messaging protocols are digital and required for text message communications, an essential technology used by almost every smartphone user. Airline lounges are luxury physical spaces and nobody needs an airline lounge to get on a plane.

Apple's anticompetitive conduct is that it bans third-party SMS/MMS clients as a way to boost usage of its iMessage protocol and disadvantage competing cross-platform messenger services. Microsoft never banned competing web browsers from accessing any protocol (e.g. HTTP or FTP) on Windows, so Apple's conduct in the messaging space is more egregious than Microsoft's previous conduct in the browser space.

You’ll need to provide evidence that 3rd party messaging clients (Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Instagram, Snapchat etc.) are actually harmed by this. Frankly, I don’t buy your argument at all, nor does it have anything to do with the issue of Beeper.

As a user I don’t want these other apps getting access to my incoming SMS messages. I’m fine with one app getting all the messages. It really doesn’t make any difference whether my messages have green or blue bubbles (and people complaining about that are really stretching).

As for the argument that 3rd parties should be allowed access to the iMessage network. When are all those other apps coming aboard that plan? When can I write my own app for Messenger instead using Meta’s?

As a user, I do want an alternative to Apple's Messages app (such as Beeper Cloud or a standalone SMS/MMS client with additional features) that can handle SMS/MMS messaging on iOS. Your choice to use Apple's Messages app does not justify Apple's anticompetitive measures to ban competing SMS/MMS apps on iOS for me or anyone else. If you don't want to switch to a non-Apple SMS/MMS app, then simply don't do it.

It's common sense that when Apple forbids competitors from implementing a feature that they use for their own product, competitors are harmed. Apple previously made Apple Mail the default email client on iOS with no option to change it. After Apple removed this anticompetitive restriction in iOS 14, competing apps such as Proton Mail and Tuta (which used their own protocols instead of the default IMAP/SMTP protocol to support end-to-end encryption) immediately became more convenient to use on iOS.

The issue with Apple's SMS/MMS client restriction is more severe. Not only am I not able to designate a different messenger as the default SMS/MMS app on iOS, I cannot install one in the first place because Apple has banned them altogether.

> When are all those other apps coming aboard that plan?

Am I the only one who remembers 2006-era Google Talk with federated XMPP? As a user, it was amazing, and I want that level of interoperability back across the board.

> Why can't I get my messages from Apple using friends in a secure way on my Pixel without serious hackery?

Because you bought a product that doesn't allow that. In fact, goes out of its way to prohibit it.

Because you're using Apple's closed platform that only permits Apple-authorized clients that only exists on Apple devices. You're still bound by Apple's ToS for their services, nobody is entitled to unrestricted access to it. If Apple releases Messages for Android, that'd be them adding an approved client for their closed network.

Messages is not an open platform, one of its features is the use of open standard SMS for fallback to chat with your friends on any platforms but SMS itself never had any support for encryption.

Hopefully, next year, Apple will switch to RCS and the RCS industry will adopt encryption between all clients and platforms.

If you want to talk to your friends on an open chat platform that is open to any platform and any client, you can with services like Signal.

> Why can't I get my messages from Apple using friends in a secure way on my Pixel without serious hackery?

You can't get that with iMessage because that is not the service that Apple is offering. If the service does not meet your needs, use another one.

Why should Apple be forced to be all things to all people? If Netflix doesn't want to offer an Ubuntu client, why should they be forced to just because you paid for it? That's not part of the service offering.

Feel free to agitate for it, but shouldn't Netflix (or whomever) get to run their business their way?

Is a free service something that has customers and non-customers?

If I acquire an iPhone second hand, I’ve potentially never given Apple a dime and I’m allowed to use iMessage for free with no ads as much as I want.

Just a thought exercise.

That can all be factored in. By initially charging so much for the phone, it left value for the previous owner to recoup by selling it to you. Apple can (and I'm sure has) factored in these second hand sales, owners per iPhone, etc. They do have the stars to see how many iCloud accounts are created/used per device over it's lifetime.

I just thought of something else.

Apple has a business chat function in iMessage where you can chat with customer service at various companies via iMessage.

Presumably the businesses pay for this functionality? If so, someone using Beeper mini to contact a company is making Apple money.

> Apple knows the advantage they have as a result of iMessage

It baffles me how this is a US specific issue, there has to be a case study on it of some sort

> it's monopolistic behavior.

It’s not a public good - there are alternatives. It’s a convenience if anything.

I would like further support, but this isn’t a monopoly.

> […] but I paid Apple for the privilege to use their service.

Under certain terms and conditions. Just like any other service: Gmail, Netflix, going to a local stadium for a sports match.

Everything you paid for was according to a certain agreement, and you don't get to do whatever you want just because you cut a cheque. You pay $X, you get Y. (Or you pay $0 and you are the product sold to others (attention economy)).

You paid for a device. iMessage itself is free. Apple doesn’t require you buy the device from them, they don’t gate secondhand sales off the network etc.

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.

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)

> 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).

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.)

> 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.

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%.

> 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.

Which demographics do they have 90% market share?

Teenagers in the US are close to 90% Apple. While that doesn't mean they all must use iMessage but it comes bundled with their phone and is what the vast majority of fellow teens have access to so it naturally becomes what they use.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/10/iphone-teen-survey-2023...

Intentional or not, Apple gets to ride off of the natural inclination of teens to conform to their peer group.

That's true for any default apps on any platforms though.

It's why Google pay Apple tens of billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine.

That's why there needs to be regulations that default apps must be optional and must be permitted to switch to any apps for open standards that are available.

Apple should not get to pick which services I want to use, that's my choice on a device that I own. If I want to use Google Messages as the default SMS/RCS client, that should be permitted and without any pushback from the platform vendors.

Maybe I just don't understand (maybe it's purely about principles?) but I really can't understand the desire for a separate app for sms, without imessage. Maybe for sms+potentially with other integrations?

There is a world of possibilities. Signal's optimistic encryption over SMS was one nice enhancement, at least before they dropped SMS support.

Apple isn't implementing encryption in RCS. I don't really care about SMS. I just want it to be that when I send a text to someone on iOS it's encrypted. And it would be nice if it had good support for emojis and multimedia. This is partially on Google too but from the outside looking in, it seems like Google has been honestly trying and Apple has been deliberately sabotaging them. (Not that I'm on Google's side - I just want a good encrypted multimedia messaging standard.)

How do you know what they're implementing and not, all we know is that they said they will implement RCS, nothing more than that. If they do not, they lose their main messaging that they care about privacy first (which is already bullshit I know).

The main issue here is that Apple is not permitting users from selecting a different SMS/RCS app on their devices. That needs to be addressed.

It should never be up to Apple (or any company in general) to regulate what open standards can be used nor what apps can be used as default for said open standards.

Apple should not be forced to support RCS but they should be forced to allow users to switch to Google Messages (or anyone else like Beeper, Insta, etc) as the default RCS client if they want.

Even "open" Android doesn't have a third party API for RCS. Google wants to lock everyone into Google Messages. The only exception is Samsung, they got special permission from Google.

Yea, Android is not open, AOSP is.

Google is not immune to this either, all companies should be treated the same way IMO. Monopoly status should not be a factor when it comes to default apps and such.

We don't know that Apple isn't supporting encryption. The rumors are that they're working with the GSM Association on an encryption spec for RCS.

Google has been pushing RCS as an open standard. In some ways it is. However, the encryption isn't. That's just Google Messages.

Google's strategy with RCS is to look like they're honestly trying to support an open standard - after trying to create a walled-garden with a half dozen proprietary messengers. However, I have a hard time trusting Google on this one. I remember Google pushing XMPP and federation with Google Talk. Lots of us gave them positive word of mouth because Google was offering us the open chat network we'd wanted. Once they got people to migrate off AIM and others, they closed it off.

In this case, is Google's RCS support even open? Can I create an RCS client? It looks like the answer is "no" (but I might be wrong). Reddit users are suggesting that you can only use Google Messages (or Samsung Messages on their devices). XDA Developers notes that Google made a special permission only available to Samsung for RCS. Even then, it looks like support for Samsung Messages might be dropped with Bell Mobility telling customers they'll have to use Google Messages for RCS.

Google has a history of shouting "we're the good guy with openness," while they plot how to close things off. Android was trumpeted as open and once Android was the only non-Apple option Google started putting everything into Google Play Services and using their essential apps to force phone makers into proprietary licensing agreements. They pushed XMPP just to burn it down. With RCS, it looks like they haven't even created something that works with third party apps from the start.

Plus, Google is controlling the RCS servers for a lot of carriers. The messages might be encrypted, but Google knows who is texting who with RCS.

If someone has better information on third-party access to RCS, I'd love to learn more. It seems like even Android fans are lamenting that RCS is restricted to the Google Messages app on Android. Maybe I'm missing something, but RCS seems like something Google co-opted because it was a "standard" and then decided that only they could build for that standard (at least on Android).

https://www.reddit.com/r/UniversalProfile/comments/znsrkz/an...

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-messages-rcs-api-third...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/

> Apple isn't implementing encryption in RCS.

There is no 'RCS encryption' as defined in the RCS standard(s) as published by GSMA. The encryption that is available on the Android platform is a Google extension: it has a Content-Type value of application/vnd.google.rcs.encrypted:

* https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf

Wonderful open standard SMS is, we should keep using it forever

> Silent SMS

> In 2010 Germany, almost half a million "silent SMS" messages were sent by the federal police, customs and the secret service "Verfassungsschutz" (offices for protection of the constitution).[83][84] These silent messages, also known as "silent TMS", "stealth SMS", "stealth ping" or "Short Message Type 0",[85] are used to locate a person and thus to create a complete movement profile. They do not show up on a display, nor trigger any acoustical signal when received. Their primary purpose was to deliver special services of the network operator to any cell phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Vulnerabilities

Let's not forget the messages sit unencrypted on your providers servers until they can be delivered. During such times, anyone with access who cares to look, can look, and it's very often looked at, if not always

Why shouldn't interoperability be free for messages? It is free for email. AIM was free, IRC was free, MSN Messenger was free, Pidgin offered a free product for years that let me talk to everyone.

Then a bunch of assholes hired some awful people to make the world a worse place and constructed barriers to communication, so they could make money.

Nothing is for free.

Email is open standard, so it is designed to be interoperable from the start but services offering emails are not free by default. They're free up to a certain point, each email service has restrictions such as certain amount of email per day or size restrictions, or they offer ads (take a look at Outlook for an example).

Back then, Internet was free too, via NetZero with ads.

You get what you pay for.

In this case, Apple customers paid for Messages by buying their devices and/or iCloud plans.

I would prefer Apple to open up and offer Messages for Android/Windows/Linux and the only way to use them is via paid iCloud plans.

> In this case, Apple customers paid for Messages by buying their devices and/or iCloud plans.

I have an active iCloud subscription and I've spent at least ten grand on Apple products over the years. Why can't I see and send iMessages on my other devices?

Because there's no iMessage client for these devices, just as there is no iMessages for Windows or Linux either.

As long as iMessage is not an open standard, your access to your Messages is restricted to the platforms that Apple owns and/or have an app for.

As for iCloud plans, I was referring to the storage for Messages, as you need paid plans to host more than 5gb of content of messages such as all of the photos and videos and so on.

Right because their anti-competitive practices prevent me from using the services I pay for the way I want to.

> Right because their anti-competitive practices prevent me from using the services I pay for the way I want to.

All services you use are subject to terms and conditions: Gmail, Netflix, watching a sports match at your local stadium. Read them before partaking instead of assuming you're entitled to everything just because you cut a cheque.

Rarely enforceable contracts of adhesion.

Even SMS is a paid service in many markets. Very expensive too, when you consider the price per byte.

Interesting, I didn't know that. Thanks for bringing that up.

It’s really a paid service in all markets. You can’t send SMS for free in any country. You need to at least be a subscriber to a cell network or some SMS only service. Whether individual providers decide to offer unlimited flat rate SMS or not is a pricing decision, but none of them offer free messaging to none-subscribers.

There are US services like Google's Voice, TextFree and TextPlus that has unlimited text messages, I used to use it before with friends without having cell networks for a few years.

I think there are two forms of interoperability that you aren't breaking out.

1. Client to Service

2. Service to Service

With email, service to service is generally free. However, Client to Service (eg. IMAP) hasn't been guaranteed to be free in the same way. Many services offer it today for free, but that's after a sharp decline in desktop mail clients. I remember how hard it was to get free IMAP back in the day. Now that most people use webmail or the company's app, they're offering it without being worried about the few people using it. If 90% of people started using IMAP and bypassing Google/Yahoo/Microsoft's ads, we might see IMAP return to being a paid service.

> AIM was free

AIM was constantly trying to break third party clients. Pidgin was often good at keeping on top of changes AOL was making to break them, but AIM certainly wasn't an open network for third parties.

MSN Messenger originally included access to AIM, but AOL blocked them. I don't think MSN Messenger (and later Windows Live Messenger) ever welcomed third party clients. Microsoft tried various strategies to get MSN Messenger to take off, but none were really open. It's more that the MSNP protocol was relatively easy to reverse engineer and Microsoft didn't go overboard trying to block third parties.

I agree with you that companies are trying to make the world a worse place via barriers to communication so they can make money. However, we didn't have great interoperability in the past. Email was interoperable, but instant messengers weren't. Pidgin was just good at staying on top of things back then and was facing off against less competent foes. If AOL were more competent, they would have been better at keeping Pidgin off their network.

If google was running a smtp server for google customers use, and you figured out how to spoof like you were a google relay so they’d carry messages for clients who were not customers, and then you tried to open up a service reselling this capability as a commercial offering, you’d absolutely be banned.

That’s what discord and signal and apple and Reddit do too. It’s your service, you are under no obligation to provide it for free to third parties. And this is true even if you are a gatekeeper - google is under no obligation to provide guaranteed open smtp or even open transit into their network (they block a lot of domains etc), even if that is cumbersome for you personally.

Forcing that would be bad for everyone because gmail would immediately devolve into a pit of spam. As would iMessage.

It’s silly to pretend otherwise and would be openly acknowledged as such in any other context other than apple-bashing.

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.

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.

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.

Interoperability is great. But I'm not arguing about technical merits; the observation is solely that Apple isn't actually forcing its users to do anything, in any legal or even coercive moral sense.

(Separately: I don't think Apple's concern is about level of service. I think they're -- reasonably -- worried that the security properties of their messaging system are harder to uphold without confidence in their client itself. This is not an unreasonable concern.)

You don’t even need to use iMessage. You can fully disable it.

How do you receive SMS then?

Through the Messages app.

> 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.

Apple does, in fact, prevent you from installing a third-party messenger on iOS that uses the device's native SMS/MMS capabilities. Apple's own Messages app is the only app that is allowed by Apple to handle SMS/MMS on iOS.

The fact that Apple has made iMessage exclusive to Messages, paired with the Messages app's privileged position as the only SMS/MMS client Apple allows on iOS, gives the Messages app and iMessage an unfair advantage over competing messengers and messaging protocols.

I have Signal and WhatsApp installed on my phone, along with 3 or 4 other apps. The “competing messaging protocols” aspect seems to be doing just fine.

I don’t think a competing SMS/MMS application would shift the competitive landscape significantly here. If it was, we’d see Beeper making an SMS app and challenging Apple’s inclusion policies there, not reverse engineering iMessage.

Beeper (Beeper Cloud) already supports SMS/MMS from Android devices, but is unable to do so for SMS/MMS from iOS devices due to Apple's restriction.

As a Signal user, you might have remembered when Signal/TextSecure supported SMS/MMS on Android in addition to Signal Protocol messages, which was a big factor in helping Signal onboard new Android users when it had a smaller user base. Signal never had the opportunity to do the same on iOS because Apple only allows its own Messages client to handle on-device SMS/MMS messages, which gave Messages (and iMessage) an unfair advantage over Signal (and the Signal Protocol).

Anticompetitive measures like Apple's SMS/MMS client restriction harm the market even when alternatives to Apple's products exist. The entire blue vs. green bubble issue would not be a problem in the first place had iOS users been able to switch to a competing messenger app that supports both SMS/MMS messaging and a newer cross-platform messaging protocol (instead of iMessage).

Google voice allows sms even on ios, so it’s not as simple as that. Why is what beeper is providing around sms different from google voice? Both cloud hosted etc - this is fine.

Also, google voice still doesnt have rcs by the way, and it’s safe to assume that they will finally sunset the service rather than follow through on “principled stand” around rcs lol. Much like the epic games case… there was never anything more than a ploy to look good to regulators/lawyers. People are tragically unable to identify even very blatant cases of special pleading, especially when they align with the anti-apple zeitgeist among large parts of the tech crowd.

Google Voice does not handle on-device SMS/MMS messages on iOS. Most phone users expect to use the phone number that comes with their cell phone plan, not a separate VoIP service like Google Voice that uses a different phone number. Special pleading is arguing that Apple is exempt from the same FTC regulations that bind other U.S. companies.

That's not how the network effect works. In that case, who is restricted isn't iPhone users but Android users who want to talk to iPhone users. Because they can't choose whether or not their contacts use an iPhone and communicating between Android and iPhones makes for a degraded experience (that the whole controversy is about), so in effect, Android users will be under pressure to switch to iPhones without them being able to do anything about that.

I talk with my friends with Androids just fine over Signal, WhatsApp, and several other apps. They haven’t expressed any pressure to switch.

But again: a network effect is not evidence of monopolistic or anticompetitive behavior. Twitter has (had?) a network effect, and could not meaningfully be said to have a monopoly over social media.

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.

> 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/ His more recent comments on federation: 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.

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.

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.

Nothing will happen.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com