I was on the beta testing team and have been using Beeper for a little over two years now.
The convenience of having an application to house all of your chat networks is amazing.
While I agree that it would be nice to only have one app installed in order to chat with everyone, the fact that it’s not open source makes me question the privacy involved. I’ve already sold my soul to these individual chat apps. I’d rather not compound that problem.
In the back of it, it seems to be a series of Matrix bridges https://github.com/beeper
oh sweet. I care far more about the backend than frontend
I see what you did there!
But how do you know that the frontend is trustworthy? People assume that frontends only talk to one backend.
Web should have thought people otherwise, but for most people it’s pretty indistinguishable from magic.
The connections to the apps are all open source, as the other user said. And you can self host it too if you want to go that route
My worry would be who is funding it and how they plan to keep operating. Venture Capital startups will always betray their users.
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their clients are proprietary but it’s built on matrix (federated chat kinda like xmpp) and their bridges (things that connect matrix to other protocols) are open source
they say you can use any matrix client, and that you can host your own home server with their bridges
I have my own matrix server that I primarily use like beeper and bridge all my chats together. Even using some of their bridges, it’s been pretty reliable for years.
I know that a few people are hating on the closed source client, but that feels unfair to me. They provide lots of open code in the form of bridges which is really the meat of the offering. Their client just makes using the bridges easier for the lay person. The bridges are super easy to use without it, invite the bridge bot to a chat room, type login and do what it says, then type login-matrix and your pretty much done.
The I suspect that the same people who are displeased about the closed client also like using tailscale which is generally pretty popular but has closed source clients on Windows and Mac as well as the server (though all support the open source headscale server)
yeah… pragmatism beats purity every time: they’re doing some great work, but to do that great work they have to fund it somehow… i think that open sourcing all of the functional components (the bridges) and keeping the shiny UI closed is a pretty good way of doing that!
i guess i get not wanting to used closed source clients too, but it’s shades of grey: people shouldn’t hate on them for keeping 1 part closed source!
Only problem is, the average user gets hooked to the shiny UI, not to the invisible backend.
When Microsoft bought Skype, they switched from a secure P2P network to a server-centered network easy to mitm… and the majority of users said nothing. Later on, they switched a few UI elements, and suddenly there was a user uproar.
If Beeper gains any traction, a shiny privative UI is their out to monetize/enshittify the service.
sure, but an open source UI isn’t going to change that… they’d just close the source!
sure you can fork it, but you can also just copy the UI to an open source clone
imagine if twitter were activitypub: kinda like having an OSS backend with a proprietary front end… i’d bet the move to mastodon would be far quicker… network effects keep people on twitter… same here with OSS backend: we can reimplement the UI and people will have the same experience
Based on the history of how Google Chat used XMPP to federate and basically siphon users into its closed UI, then defederate… I no longer trust anyone with a closed UI that’s planning to offer “extra value” to its users.
If someone closed their open UI, you can always fork the last open version, which at least gives you an even start.
If
Twitter𝕏 were to switch to ActivityPub… I’d actually worry about people flocking back to 𝕏, back to their old networks and recommendation algorithms. Guess it’s no longer possible, since 𝕏 pretty much destroyed the old Twitter environment, but I’d still worry… and with Elon wanting to make 𝕏 a “social network for everything”, that sounds dangerously close to ActivityPub.
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They will be offering a premium subscription offer for more bells and whistles other than the free option…I don’t know anything about user betrayals conducted by Beeper.
Proprietary clients.
I don’t understand the concern here.
You have no way of verifying that the client is only doing what it claims. The Open Source community is highly suspicious of proprietary software, doubly so when it’s based off of Open Source code.
If youre okay with that then no worries, but ofr myself and many others it’s an absolute deal breaker.
To be fair, the client they provide to make bridging more accessible is proprietary, however you can fire up a fresh copy of element and connect it if you want and just use the text interface.
The clients are closed so that they have something to sell and profit. Not everyone can afford to give their time away for free.
I’ll take the risk knowing what I know about the Beeper people that I’ve been working with for over two years.
“I know these guys, trust me” is not a valid security assessment.
If you know the team, then that’s a pretty good reason to trust them. Only works if you know the team, though.
Sounds reasonable to me
That’s fine… for you, right now.
But I (and probably most users) don’t know them, over time people come and go, some even change who they are, businesses get sold. Only open source persists.
Thankfully all of the Matrix bridges they created for Beeper are open source.
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This post reads like an ad, how is it upvoted so much?
Well known software built using Matrix. A lot of people have been following this project.
Yeah I’m excited about it. Dubious and skeptical, but excited too.
The last time I heard the word beeper it referred to a pager. You kids know what a pager was?
You kids know what a pager was?
Yes.
Lol.
I owned one for a while.
It’s how you used to buy weed.
Correct: It was the dealers best friend.
I had a pager in highschool. 🧓
That brought up some memories I had suppressed lol.
Some time ago I found my old CocaCola Beeper. That time might’ve been 10+ years ago…
Lol.
Kinda funny how quickly those disappeared when cell phones came along.
It’s what those ancient iPads, I think they were called b’oks had right? ;-)
think I’m gonna give this a try but the style of writing in the blog post isn’t making this easy
👩🚀 Spacebar
Not the one on your keyboard, silly 😜
shudders
I guess the target demographic is tweens?
tweens
Now called 𝕏ns… (too soon?)
For… free… seems like people make a very strong effort to not learn a shit from experiences
Right this sounds like giving all of my personal messages to one more entity.
This looks like a promising application; and as long as the business models stay sustainable and the company remains ethical; it should be a good place.
I’ll bite and queue up.
Ok but why is the thumbnail a scene from Midsommar…
This looks like a modern Trillian. It’s about time.
I’m skeptical. Trillian still exists, but hardly anyone uses it. It can’t connect to a bunch of services because their operators decided to disable third-party access, and I remember that even back in the day it was constantly playing catch-up with network updates that broke compatibility. “One chat app to rule them all” is a neat idea, but I don’t see it working in practice.
Yeah, it’s been so long now I don’t remember why I stopped using Trillian (and Pidgin). But when it worked, it was so much nicer just to have one program running vs 5.
It was great while it lasted, but I stopped using Trillian simply because people stopped using the networks it supported. I used it for ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger. The latter three don’t even exist anymore, and ICQ is a shadow of its former self owned by some Russians now. Some people migrated over to Skype, some I just lost contact with altogether. Thinking back to those carefree days fills me with a strange sense of melancholy. It all seems to have gone wrong somewhere along the way, and not just in terms of IM apps.
Thinking back to those carefree days fills me with a strange sense of melancholy. It all seems to have gone wrong somewhere along the way, and not just in terms of IM apps.
Same here. And I can’t put my finger on it. I always dismissed it as coming of age and lifestyle changes.
I used to use Disa, I think until the FB messenger connection broke? I hate that I have 6 apps in my IMs folder.
I was a Trillian beta tester as well.
Thank you for your service. Those really were the days.
Edit: not dismissing your current work. This place is pretty nice too :)
Welcome :)
Honestly this app sounds almost too good to be true, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it anyways just in case.
Been using it for about 2 months, set up was easy I just hate resigning into everything haha. So far it has been exactly what I needed, a place for my android texts, iOS texts, and discord messages in one place.
My one bug I ran into is when sharing something to someone I click their name on the menu that pops up on androids and instead of opening the chat with that person it opens the list of my recent texting partners.
Would beeper give me access to iMessage without having an iDevice?
Yes
Sorry for the follow up question but is it text only or is it a workaround for the video compression as well?
Thanks for sharing, regardless it’s promising!
Text, images, videos…I believe there is, or will be soon, video conferencing.
My parents are going to be getting a lot more dog videos soon!
Damn…I’m going to be getting a lot of dog videos from my parents.
Yes! One of the main reasons lots of people use Beeper
Well universal chat (like universal e-mail) is either going to be a common open protocol (does not seem very likely given Apple and all the other players) or is going to be something like this on the client side. Although its a lot of work, it does seem more possible. The only pity is it can’t solve connecting to services that I don’t use like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp.
The EU is forcing the big chat companies to open their gates. They have until April of next year to comply, so we might see a common protocol for chat pretty soon
This one I hadn’t heard about until now, do you have a link to some more information?
Digital market act https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Chat apps are only part of it. It will force iOS and android to offer competing app market too.
Oh, I hadn’t realized chat apps were covered by it, but that sounds promising! Thanks for the link 🙂
Can you explain how this affects chat apps? What do they need to implement?
They need to be interoperable. For example if you’re on Signal but want to chat with your parents who are on FB Messenger, then you would be able to chat to them via Signal.
You can envision each chat apps as different instances and these communicate to eachother with a common protocol, just like ActivityPub in Lemmy.
That sounds like something that companies are going to do literally everything they can to avoid. I hope this makes them squirm.
Isn’t Apple restricting their part of that to EU citizens?
That is really going to be interesting, yes! It is seriously needed despite what Apple will say. And if implemented correctly it can still be E2EE but with our own client apps.
And the cost is simply your privacy and security
Apparently it’s based on matrix bridges, and you can self-host it if you want. Sounds intriguing imo.
It’s not all bad, you’re right. It’s just that this
To use Beeper, you must give the app permission to send and receive messages through other chat networks using your account credentials. By definition, this may be less secure than using other chat apps alone, especially encrypted chat apps like Signal.
Makes me lose interest. I understand the motivation behind it, yes they encrypt e2e but it’s still sacrificing security (or maybe I should say increasing risk)
Self hosting is a good alternative option!
The bridges need to decrypt your messages before encrypting them again to send them to you. This is done in memory, so it’s not impossible for your messages to be read by beeper, but quite difficult.
That said, self hosting will always be a safer option. It’s just not for everyone
How is it difficult for Beeper to read unencrypted messages from memory?
Super easy. Especially since this is all under their control. So they could simply write those messages elsewhere if they wanted to. I’m not saying they do, but it’s technically possible and a walk in the park.
I would generally trust such a company to do it right. But that doesn’t save you when law enforcement and such get involved.
Memory is not storage, so you would need to be logging what’s in memory, I guess. Not impossible, but also not trivial either.
Honestly I’m not sure how it could be done, but I’m sure it’s possible
You mean you don’t want to go back to the Blackberry model?
Sorry, I’ll never use a service asking me upfront my phone number “for security purposes.” Fuck off beeper!
Yep, immediately closed the page when I saw that in the sign up.
Zero reason they need my phone number, fuck off
Applicable XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/
