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.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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In the back of it, it seems to be a series of Matrix bridges https://github.com/beeper
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The bridges are all open source, and they use matrix synapse as their server installation - though their client is a closed source fork of element with changes. You can use any matrix client to connect to it, and they say it's a standard synapse setup.
If privacy is a concern, bringing your own client should remove that concern as the rest is open source. It's also e2e encrypted, as any matrix server is.
I self host my own matrix homeserver with bridges set up using their code. The only bit of their stack I can't use is the client. I don't like that that's closed source, that's frustrating.
Edit: while writing this two more people made the same comment. Sorry!
> It's also e2e encrypted
well, in Beeper's case one of the ends is their server. your message gets encrypted when you send it, decrypted on Beeper's server, and then forwarded to the service you're bridging with.
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closed source fork of element with changes
🚩🚩🚩
e2e encrypted
More like "e2mitm2e" encrypted, with the mitm being the bridges.
If the target network doesn't support encryption, that's "e2mitm2null"... does it at least alert you in that case?
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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.
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There's reasons people moved away from multi-network apps like Trillian and Gaim/Pidgin... They were always playing catch-up with the official clients, and frequently broke when there were server-side changes. Protocols for proprietary messaging apps were (and still are) undocumented. I'm not convinced they've actually solved any of these issues.
I think they mostly died when GChat turned off XMPP support and became a walled garden.
If Beeper does become a successful business though, there'll be a full time development team "playing catch-up" with money behind them. It's interesting if you read this that they're rolling out features ahead of the message providers in some cases!
They're also leveraging some existing infrastructure. Beeper is built on Matrix which does a lot of the heavy lifting for them.
> I think they mostly died when GChat turned off XMPP support and became a walled garden.
Most of the protocols supported by Trillian were walled gardens too - AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, etc were all proprietary.
> I think they mostly died when GChat turned off XMPP support and became a walled garden.
Trillian had paid full-time developers too. I'm not sure what'd they'd be doing differently to what Trillian did.
I think one difference is that the rate of change in chat apps has slowed down dramatically. When was the last time one of the major apps added a new feature you can't live without anymore? So it might be easier now to keep up.
Huh, in my opinion people simply moved away, because the underlying messenger were used less and less. Once everyone ran around with smartphones using WhatsApp, fewer and fewer people cared about MSN, ICQ, etc.
Not "everyone" uses Whatsapp though - I deleted mine after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and I know of a few others who also did so. As far as I know Whatsapp has still never changed their T&C to pass metadata upstream to Facebook.
This is really region dependent. In Europe (or at least the Netherlands) almost everybody with a smartphone uses Whatsapp
Talk to anyone in latin america, you must use whatsapp. There's no avoiding it. Some have tried Telegram a while ago, but most have reverted back to their usual whatsapp or facebook messenger. It's crazy.
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The biggest question of all,- Is it Open source ?
My phone will only installs opensource apps.
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I tried Beeper two weeks ago.
Performance was not great and I didn’t like the apps design that much but most importantly: this is not what I want. I want chat apps to be interoperable. I don’t want to be on WhatsApp and Signal and Matrix and yadayadayada. I want to be only on Matrix in the future. I hope the EUs DMA makes that happen.
I agree, but this provides a path towards that. It is Matrix underneath so if we get a proportion of people using Beeper they it becomes easy to transition to using Matrix to talk to those people.
I don’t think it does. You can’t delete any of the other apps and no one actually uses Matrix after all.
It might even do the opposite, where apps like WhatsApp can argue that they are now interoperable so they don’t have to change anything.
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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!
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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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Anyone have any thoughts on the privacy and security aspect of this?
Your messages will go through their servers. They claim they don't persist anything but you can't really have any proof of that.
There could even be NSA spyware that they're not aware of in their data centers.
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I remember trying to setup matrix bridges using these exact repositories a while ago!
So if this company does the dirty job behind like server management and brings it nicely packaged as product, I'm fine with this. I'm tired of having to install more than 2-3 apps (lots of families abroad) just to communicate.
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
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Meh, there is always some kind of feature it's missing that I want from the official app or one of it's competitors. I tried it for a while but ultimately went back to my regular apps.
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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!
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The last time I heard the word beeper it referred to a pager. You kids know what a pager was?
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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.
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Sorry, I'll never use a service asking me upfront my phone number "for security purposes." Fuck off beeper!
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