Every instance of that is a huge guesswork mess that I wouldn't wish upon average people to navigate though. RCS has tons of "maybe implement" features, and don't even get me started on the mess that's XMPP. If you ever tried to use OMEMO from two different clients at once, you know what I'm talking about.
If two clients have good implementation, there is nothing messy about user experience. The only problem is that most clients are developed by hobbyists in their spare time, who might have very different ideas on how to do key verification, etc, so you get only what you get. It is not because of the protocol.
No, I don't. OMEMO practically's only benefit is fixing that one usecase.
By the way, iMessage is XMPP. Whatsapp is XMPP. Just artificially closed. Long etc.
I've heard these rumors, but they don't seem to be true. WhatsApp seems to have moved on a long time ago (to a binary format wrapped in an implementation of the noise protocol framework) and I find zero indication iMessage was ever XMPP.
But that's besides the point. XMPP is great for a uniform ecosystem (in fact, a lot of XEPs are some company standardizing their use-case), but awful if you allow federation and third party clients.
Isn't that exactly what you're asking of Apple? Apple already has SMS. You want them to adopt RCS because it has cool new features that are lacking in SMS.
Let's say I propose this rule: Apple must publish the iMessage spec and allow other services to send/receive iMessages.
That doesn't force Apple or anyone else to implement any specific feature, beyond allowing others to send/receive messages. WhatsApp or Signal could decide they don't want to implement the iMessage protocol and they're free to do so. WhatsApp might support voice calling, but that doesn't force iMessage to implement voice calling. It's simply saying that third parties can choose to implement the iMessage protocol if they want.
There may be features that will only work within one platform, but that won't give anyone a lock-in advantage since others can implement those features if they're popular. For example, let's say Apple implements CoolNewFeature. They have to publish the spec for CoolNewFeature. Sure, maybe it will take 6 months for Google and WhatsApp to implement CoolNewFeature, but there's nothing preventing them from doing so. Likewise, WhatsApp already has voice calling, but you won't be able to do that with iMessage folks because Apple hasn't implemented that. That seems ok to me. If Apple starts to lose users to WhatsApp, they'll want to implement that interoperability. If it isn't an important feature, it isn't important whether they implement it or not.
To me, it seems like this is about preventing companies from creating walled gardens. It's not about forcing companies to adopt certain standards or features. Apple doesn't need to adopt RCS. If others could send/receive iMessage-protocol messages, it would provide an interoperable system. Some might complain that X protocol is better than Y protocol, but that's the history of everything. Ultimately, those types of things haven't prevented third parties from creating interoperability with less perfect protocols.
Yes, and that kind of anticompetitive behavior is what the EU is trying to curb.
Just publishing the specs will not allow anyone to send/receive iMessages. It's built on a closed loop CA / certificate system.
Remember that Steve Jobs actually announced on-stage it would be an open protocol without actually discussing that with his engineers? The architecture is designed to be closed from the get-go, and opening up the iMessage ecosystem in it's current design is simply not possible without giving 3rd parties considerable access to Apple internals, affecting a ton of stuff beyond iMessage, and pose serious security risks.
Could Apple re-design a messaging system which would allow this and roll it out transparently to all it's users? Absolutely, but that would require a ton of engineering work, and won't be there tomorrow.
I would assume one downside is a higher amount of spam. Currently you need to have an Apple device to send an iMessage. So sending spam is an expensive proposition.
If I want to spam you I buy a bunch of numbers on Plivo and start sending your number messages with SMS, the existing standard. They show up in iMessage on your phone. The only difference is they're green instead of blue.
So, how do I need an iPhone to send you spam? iMessage doesn't do anything related to spam other than let you delete and report it.
But if it did work that way, then the standard could include that messages need to be signed with a device attestation key from an approved vendor or something like that. There could be a way to have your attestation keys registered like we do for CAs today so that your attestation hardware could be used. Phone manufacturers would all implement device attestation, like Apple and Google do.
I know the difference between SMS and iMessage. Currently I get plenty of SMS spam. I get pretty much zero iMessage spam. I’m pretty sure that I would get more spam if iMessage was made interoperable, even if device attestation was implemented as you described. Some Googling suggests that RCS, the competing standard for messaging, does not implement device attestation.
Right, I'm just genuinely confused. How would you meaningfully distinguish between the spam? Why would there be more of it? Wouldn't it just come in blue instead of green? I'm not sure I understand how adding a 2nd avenue for spammers opens new doors when the existing avenue is totally sufficient. Perhaps if you could send messages from an email only account is what you're saying? Personally I would hope there'd be ways to control unsolicited messages in the messaging apps and report spam to the carriers. And honestly I was thinking that as an sms replacement, messages from email-only accounts would be something different carriers would want to gate/control onto the network as they see fit. Or more ideally the protocol itself could require messages to be signed with device attestation keys. Why iMessage doesn't give me better spam management options for existing SMS is the real question.
But I think I see the miscommunication. I’m assuming that iMessage gains interoperability and thus there are more people who could potentially send spam. But I think you are arguing that SMS would be replaced with the more advanced, interoperable protocol. In that case, I understand your arguments why there would be the same amount or less spam.
Maybe we are not that interesting?
But I do get a spam call from time to time.
I am looking forward to Google being able to finally get ahold of my iMessage and hoover it into their surveillance capitalism machine. What a huge benefit to me!
RCS will have no effect on iMessage whatsoever. Messages between a homogeneous group of iOS users has no reason to touch Google owned (or other) RCS servers. And for Android users, RCS is a meaningful upgrade from traditional SMS.
Isn't RCS at this point a propriety Google protocol, not a standard? There aren't any 'or other' servers.
There are plenty. Like users thinking imessage is shit because of third party clients. Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted or forcing an all network/server to provide services to arbitrary clients? If I block firefox on my webserver, will you or EU tell me I can't??
If those are the concerns against forcing them to open it, they shall force them now! I mean, lol...
>Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted or forcing an all network/server to provide services to arbitrary clients?
There are no "inherent rights" period. Right comes from law, which ideally comes from what society deems worthy to have. If EU wants open messaging than can be made into a law. It's that simple.
Whether the app is free or not is irrelevant. It's enough a consideration that it occupies a big percentage of usage share, so having it close presents a moat against communicating with a big chunk of the population (and also restricts those using iOS just one client).
>If I block firefox on my webserver, will you or EU tell me I can't??
They very well could, if the right conditions applied...
Absolutley not true. The law codifies what is already true with respect to rights but the law also fails to codify rights as with womens rights and involuntary servitude, women and black people didn't suddenly gain rights when laws were passed, they've always had those rights except the law and society failed to recognize that until some point. Law or not there are fundamental and inalienable truths from which rights and obligations can be discerned.
> If EU wants open messaging than can be made into a law. It's that simple.
Yes and if EU wants to do any number unfair or dowright evil things they can, it is that simple. What is your point, did I dispute the simplicity?
I was talking about what consumers what and what service is being offered by Apple and the inherent unfairness towards one group of consumers and favoritism towards non-american electronic makers and developers. They claim to be democratic and support equality and fairness under the law and by that claim I can contend they are in the wrong by their own standards.
Any company and consumer would naturally be treated the same if the EU is not a banana republic and as such this affects everyone.
> Whether the app is free or not is irrelevant.
It is abdolutley vital! Commerce and trade can be regulated and taxed by government authorities but a free app is not commerce. This is regulation of speech and interaction between people. If apple at least had ads in iMessage it could be commerce but it isn't. You are throwing away your rights so u can satisfy some rage against a corporation you don't have to interact with.
> It's enough a consideration that it occupies a big percentage of usage share, so having it close presents a moat against communicating with a big chunk of the population (and also restricts those using iOS just one client)
So a big chunk of the population made a choice but the government should prevent them? Very democratic! You can pass laws forcing government services and entities to not use iMessage but even the US isn't banning tiktok outright or forcing them to be compatible with something they control because... you know, of the people, for the people and all that.
> They very well could, if the right conditions applied...
Yes and that is unfair and concerning because in a free society people have liberties that allow them a choice about who they want to interact with.
Some companies are becoming base infrastructure and so they need some regulation. What do you think if your piped water company would refuse to sell you water just because your house number ends with 8?
Nope. They got them when those laws were passed.
You might think that they always "should have had" those rights, which is valid, but different from "always had them".
But they absoltely didn't have them, and if they attempted to exercize them as if they had them, they'd be ignored, prevented, beaten up, or worse.
>Yes and if EU wants to do any number unfair or dowright evil things they can, it is that simple. What is your point, did I dispute the simplicity?
Yes, they could. You could perhaps argue morals (based on what? Your take of what's "unfair" and "downright evil"? Because I'm a European and I don't find this law unfair at all), and that could be discussed.
But you didn't discuss morals, you wrote "by what right or authority". Well, they have the right and the authority, so?
>I was talking about what consumers what and what service is being offered by Apple and the inherent unfairness towards one group of consumers and favoritism towards non-american electronic makers and developers.
Sorry, but if you come here to sell something, you better sell it on our terms and under EU laws. If you don't want to do that, you can always opt to not sell it.
Also, you don't know what "consumers want" in general. Did you ask consumers if they want to keep Messages closed?
Our disagreement is that you think a right is something granted by the law and inability to excecise a right means you don't have it. A right simply means there is a valid justification to allow a person to do not do something. You can have a right and it can unjustly be taken from you. The government or even the fundamental rule of law exists in part to enable justice and justice exists beyond the confines of law and government. If it is just for a person to or not do something and there is a valid and reasonable explanation for that thing then it is justifiable and preventing or coercing a person to contradict that would be unjust therefore it is a right. If the law fails to codify a right then the law is unjust with that respect.
To put it differently, after a law is passed to recognize a right, people can ask for compensation for past injustices even though in the past the injustice was legal. This is because despite legality, a person had rights and due to a failure of law and society that right was not protected and damage was done.
> But you didn't discuss morals, you wrote "by what right or authority". Well, they have the right and the authority, so?
Well that is what I am challenging. The EU or governments in general don't have absolute authority over all things. In the case of EU and democratic governments there is a contract of law between the people and the government defining the authority of the government. I don't know EU law well but in the US the government has the right to regulate commerce which iMessage as a free app is excluded. In a free society, unless the government has explicit authority to regulate something it can't just restrict what you do, that's the whole point of liberty. I was genuinely asking what authority the EU had to regulate the activity of offering a free service to the public that doesn't involve hosting content, only transporting messages. This authority if legit would mean the EU can for example interfere in moderation decisions by sites like HN.
> Sorry, but if you come here to sell something, you better sell it on our terms and under EU laws. If you don't want to do that, you
But nothing is being sold, iMessage is a free app so your point is invalid.
> Also, you don't know what "consumers want" in general. Did you ask consumers if they want to keep Messages closed?
There are people who prefer a closed messaging ecosystem. For people who want a more open system there is Signal, Wire,Briar, Threema, All the Matrix clients,etc... there is no shortage of optiond and most of them are supported on the iPhone. So you and the EU don't care about open apps being available to the EU. You just want to force others to not have a closes messaging system.
You're the bully here.
First off, arguably it's very much not free because it's only available if you purchase an Apple product. The cost of operating iMessage is built into the price you pay to use Apple's services and software when purchasing their hardware. I can't go to Apple.com and freely sign up for iMessage.
Second, I can't set up a free lemonade stand on my lawn and secretly add harmful substances to the lemonade and gov't can't touch me because I didn't charge a fee. I mean come on, that's not how the government works either.
We cede a monopoly on violence to the government so they may govern all aspects of life where we believe they are needed, not just commerce. In order to protect and maintain a free society, the government must discourage and punish people that encroach on other peoples' rights universally.
If we reach consensus that as a society the mechanism we use to communicate with each other should be standardized and open so that anybody may interoperate with it, because it's in line with a free society where we believe individuals have a right to the liberty of running their own software in whatever way they see fit (much like your choice of car or clothing), then that's that and the government can step in and try to protect those rights.
Without a law granting/protecting your right to X, or at least the power to grant it to yourself and enforce it, you don't have a right to X.
You, at best have, a "justification for having the right to X". And even that is debatable. You might just think you have a justification, but ther people might disagree with you that X is any kind of right you oughta have.
So, where does this "valid justification" comes from? God? Some holy book? Some wise document written by founding fathers? Sorry, we don't believe in those things in these here parts. It needs to be based on either law or a body (could be "the people") that can force it into law.
> But nothing is being sold, iMessage is a free app so your point is invalid.
Doesn't matter to my argument whether its paid, or given free as a lure to keep you in the ecosystem (which is the money maker) - or even just given free in general, out of the goodness of their heart.
If a company doesn't like the terms under which a country or union of countries asks them them to sell and/or give away their app, they can always stop giving it to that country/union of countries. Easy as that.
>You're the bully here.
"Bully" against a company? For making make their app more open and compatible? That's some next level Ayn Rand shit right here...
This is actually false. Our founding fathers very much were not settled on where rights originated. Some believed, like GP do, that rights are innate and that it's the responsibility of a government to try and protect common ones. Others believed, like you, that rights need to be enumerated. One of the arguments against enumeration is that such a list could be used, as you are trying to do, as a mechanism to exclude rights not officially listed or known or conceived of at the time, which could lead to unintended oppression.
Should the government have innate power to oppress by omission? Are laws an allow list or a deny list? Does the government only get the power we the people grant it, or does it get every power we don't specifically reserve for ourselves? Neither position is absolutely correct. That's why we have courts and process. But the scales tend to tip towards the government only only being allowed power we cede to it, not the reverse.
Here's a relevant example: consider freedom of thought. Western governments generally do not explicitly codify such a concept. But we practically universally believe that human beings are afforded the the privacy of their mind. After all we're allowed to express ourselves freely and all our laws are designed to punish actions. The bill of rights was created at a time when it was impossible to know the nature of someone's thoughts, so this question was preposterous. But it's becoming possible now to capture an image of one's thoughts. If we could use that information to discriminate, it's very sane to imagine a self-serving bureaucracy would try to. So how do you establish your right to think in a society where it's innately oppressed by virtue of not being explicitly granted? See: civil disobedience.
I agree with your position but not with your rhetoric.
Did you ever look into what happened with XMPP extensions?
Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices. We literally have seen leaked emails where Apple deliberately does this as an anti-consumer platform lock in play. The slippery slope hypothetical you provide is not the reality. Nobody is asking governments to regulate adding cool new features to the <Open Message Protocol> that participants can choose to implement or not for their users as they see fit. What regulators are saying is that Apple can't deliberately make Sneetches of us and needs to allow interoperability on their human-critical messaging platform. In the US the DMCA actually makes it explicitly legal to reverse engineer a protocol for the purpose of interoperability. This idea basically extends that to "and you can't punish users for building applications that interoperating with it" but of course is framed as "just fucking stop disallowing it greedy asshats".
If I could install a 3rd party SMS app on iPhone (like how Signal used to work on Android) I'd be more skeptical about needing this regulation.
If Apple wasn't doing this artificially and iMessage actually had features that were innovative, and that other people couldn't reasonably be expected to implement in a way that would be a detriment to the protocol, I'd be more skeptical. TBH they've probably spent more resources on preventing interoperability than if they didn't care and let it be open...
It's like you don't believe it's possible with the countless man years of resources these companies have to have software both interoperate and degrade gracefully when one client doesn't support all protocol features. I don't buy it, I believe we can.
You're spreading FUD.