this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Beeper reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users::The push to bring iMessage to Android users today adds a new contender. A startup called Beeper, which had been working on a multi-platform messaging

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[–] gregorum@lemm.ee 78 points 11 months ago (12 children)

i had no idea that having green chat bubbles upset people so much.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 33 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I've seen a lot of people complain online about getting dropped by a tinder date/etc because they swapped numbers and the other person realized they didn't have an iPhone from the green text. Probably best not to date someone who would drop you over that, but there's a weird elitism over blue/green texts.

[–] Exusia@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

Attempting to get a date in the current US scene was hard enough without this petty bullshit. While it was certainly disheartening to see another one slip away, knowing I was dodging a bullet was worth the time. I did enjoy (only once) getting "ugh green bubbles? Srs?" And sliding back "yeah sorry I have a Fold#, iPhones r for brokies" and blocking the contact

(People are free to own iPhone and you're free to make your own descicions or debate the merits of android/iphone, I am more just intolerant of the fan elitism - not iPhone owners in general, hope you have a nice day)

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Weird, is that an excursively US American thing? I am European and have never experienced "phone racism".

[–] Iseja@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It has started in Sweden with younger generations that wants to replicate everything from the US.

[–] rishado@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Don't you guys use WhatsApp though as the base messaging app?

[–] Iseja@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Swedes don't use whatsapp. Mostly Facebook messenger or sms/imessage.

[–] Toes@ani.social 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've never heard of that, that's kinda hilarious and really helps them dodge a bullet.

Apple has spent a significant amount of effort over creating a sense of elitism for using its products but that's largely unique to the western world. Most of the world uses android devices by far.

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[–] Scubus@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Nah bro, if they bought an iPhone that means I can't trust them with money. Screw that noise

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

As much as I dislike apple, I don't really hold it against people if they choose to use iPhones. Iphones are overpriced, but they're decent phones and I can't really blame someone for not wanting to learn a different mobile OS or lose out on all the apps they've paid for. Also a lot of android OEMs make terrible design decisions with their software modifications/bloatware, and it can be really hard for someone non-tech savvy to know how to buy a good android phone. Iphones are comparably simple to shop for, you only have a few options and they're all going to be decent (if not necessarily a good value).

Iphone elitism really bothers me though, it feels like it's taking a lack of knowledge/experience and turning it into something to feel smug about.

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[–] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

In the US, every millenial is a communist until a green bubble shows up in the group chat... then the poverty jokes commence

[–] GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Millennials are pushing 40

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago
[–] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Dumb kids are always dumb. And cruel.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

Doesn't bother me at all.

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[–] urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone 43 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It’s not just about the color of the bubbles. I have Wi-Fi at work but poor cell signal. Because I have an iPhone and my husband has an android, we have to use another chat client to text while I’m at work. No cell signal means no texting android phones for me, because I can only text people with iMessage over Wi-Fi.

Plus, remember: kids have phones. They do get bullied over chat bubble colors, just like I got bullied for wearing clothes from Walmart in school. It doesn’t have to be this way, it’s Apple’s fault for making iMessage a walled garden.

[–] kia@lemmy.ca 30 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Is it even a garden though? I don't see any benefit in using it over something like Signal other than it coming pre-installed on your phone.

[–] inverted_deflector@startrek.website 10 points 11 months ago

Sure, but they wont. The insidious thing about iMessenger is that it isnt iChat. It is the apple default text messaging app. Which is good because it means that all your messages are in one place, and you dont have to try to convince your older family member to install a 3rd party chat app. You just have a chat app. This tricks users not into thinking that texting is just better on apple.

But its bad because it only works between other apple products and users. This is objectively Apple's shortcoming, however there are enough iPhones in the wild and enough people in the US who defaulted to just hitting the sms/mms icon instead of downloading a chat app that the odd man out might be the android user. And it's not just about the green bubble being green. If you invite an a green bubble to a group text then all your rich chat messenger features go away and it turns into an MMS thread. Which is objectively bad.

But yes they could just download and use whatsapp,line, telegram, signal, facebook messenger(and in the early days things like aim/yim/msn) But they dont. The fact is their default messenger app works, and it works well with most people they talk to so the problem is the green text.

It's especially silly when you consider the "there's an app for that" generation of user and so many things are apps but they refuse to engage on other chat channels. People download different apps to get dates, the navigate, to browse websites that shouldnt even be apps, to order food, order groceries, order taxi's, but a chat app just to talk with you? ehhhhhhhhh.

[–] urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You know honestly, now that I’ve typed that I’m not sure. I don’t do a lot of texting audio snippets or other stuff other people do, so maybe, maybe not.

The problem is, I should be able to text people at default without worrying I have cell signal or if group chats are going to work correctly, instead of needing to ask people what 3rd party chat service they prefer.

[–] AThing4String@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

needing to ask people what 3rd party chat service they prefer

Yeah Signal's great and all, but my spouse's family refuses to use anything but WhatsApp, half my family uses FB Messenger while the other half use Discord (and they are feuding about it), the older folks in my hobby group refuse to learn anything but the default text on their phone (that group chat is an unmanageable NIGHTMARE), and anything from work uses teams.....except the US folks who use slack, and now my friends want to get me on Signal, too? Relevant XKCD.

The solution to my problem is not yet another messaging app. I just want ONE inbox!

I've been pretty happy with Beeper so far. There are some features that aren't quite as good as using each app natively, yet, but I think they're off to a great start considering the sheer scale and variety of interfaces they're working with. It even gives me tools to deal with the hobby chat anarchy, and now I can send default SMS messages from my computer!

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[–] Toes@ani.social 3 points 11 months ago

In some cases you can manually select the type of service on your phone. Try changing your phone manually to 3g and see if that helps. I find it works well in areas where I have poor LTE/5G coverage.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Why is this even a need to be solved? are people that stupidly superficial about the color of y fucking message bubble? (im not american but where im from literally nobody wiorth their salt gives a hoot)

[–] Stephen304@lemmy.ml 14 points 11 months ago

The color of the bubble is only important because it helps iPhone users know who not to add to group chats, since the presence of a non-imessage user in an iMessage group chat downgrades the entire chat to grainy photos, no reactions/ read receipts, voice memos, typing indicators, etc. I don't blame them at all, many of them don't use any third party messaging apps because iMessage is built in and gives them everything that other chat apps have, with the benefit that they don't have to convince anybody to install it because all their iPhone owning friends have it preinstalled.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 10 points 11 months ago

are people that stupidly superficial about the color of y fucking message bubble?

Yes, apparently.

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[–] Lantern@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Assuming that it’s actually reverse engineered, this is great news. If not, there’s a massive lawsuit brewing.

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[–] felixwhynot@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Seems like Beeper will see the cleartext of the replies, though, since they send the notifications via BPNs, right?

[edit: thanks for the replies. I see now the footnote on their BPNs diagram: “Push notification does not contain message contents” so it seems like the answer is “no they will not”]

[–] LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 17 points 11 months ago

No, they know that a message has been received, but the phone is what decrypts the message. Beeper can't see it.

[–] Rootiest@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

No, with this new app messages are encrypted between you and Apple's iMessage servers using iMessage encryption more or less the same way an iPhone does.

The push service simply notifies your device it has a message waiting, no message content passes through Beeper servers.

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

I don’t know for sure, but often mobile notification protocols are more like “wake up and check your incoming messages” than “user foo says bar”. If this is true then the best they could do is collect timestamps of when you probably received messages.

[–] pastabatman@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (4 children)

It still needs Apple's servers, which tells me they will try and find a way to shut it down. Now that Apple is going to implement RCS, I care a lot less about this.

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[–] KinNectar@kbin.run 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I really want to sign up for Beeper, but the fact I have to give them my phone number to sign up for a waitlist seemed like a red flag. How is their security profile?

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)
[–] twix@infosec.pub 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

They do have to run servers in order to keep the service alive. If you want to run this stuff yourself on your own server that’s possible using PyPush. The reason they have to run those servers for you is to keep the notification service alive.

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[–] stu@lemmy.pit.ninja 4 points 11 months ago (5 children)

By that logic, there's nothing guaranteeing iMessage on iPhones is secure or private either because it's closed source. If you don't want to trust Beeper mini, you'll be free to run their iMessage bridge on your own Matrix stack when they open source it at some point, which they're promising to do (and you still won't know that Apple isn't scraping your messages on the iOS side). When I decide to trust a company, it's because I look at what they're transparently communicating to their end users. Every indication is that they are trying to get out of the middle of handling encrypted messages. Their first move to make this happen was allowing people to self host their own Beeper bridges (which you can still do with Beeper Cloud if you prefer and you will know that your messages are always encrypted within the Beeper infrastructure). They aren't going to release the source for their client ever because that's the only way they make any money.

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[–] jamon@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

This post is referring to beeper mini. It's confusing naming, but that's not the same as beeper(cloud service). Beeper mini is available to everyone on the play store and is not a cloud service. You just get it, login to Google (to pay the subscription cost) and it works. No invite needed

[–] Merlin404@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Want a invite code? Its just to prevent people from mass signing up

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[–] LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's to prevent multiple entries by one person. Their security is very good, with audits and their products being largely open source (for this, PyPush. For Beeper Cloud, their Synapse fork and their bridges.). Only the parts that don't matter to security (the clients, mostly) are closed source.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


What may hold it at bay is the Digital Markets App (DMA), a law in Europe that says big tech companies will have to have an interoperable interface for their chat networks.

In addition, Beeper uses certificate pinning, which makes network traffic analysis more difficult to perform in order to verify its claims.

To work around this limitation, the team built BPNs to connect to Apple’s servers on the user’s behalf when the app isn’t running.

When the Android phone’s battery died, however, the texts reverted to green bubbles and did not make it to Beeper’s app — they went to Google Messages instead.

The company is also hoping to gain trust by building in public, with 50-plus projects that it’s published to GitHub with the open source code that goes into the app.

Founded in 2020, Beeper comes from former Y Combinator partner Eric Migicovsky and CTO Brad Murray, previously of wholesale marketplace startup Faire and Fitbit.


The original article contains 1,306 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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