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EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

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441–450 of 645 posts

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#441

This sounds nice, but when you really think about the consequences it really is not. Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that could make messaging better but this policy is making things harder to implement because it would be impossible to make it interoperate with other messaging apps? I don't get w…

> people here enjoy seeing big tech companies "owned" by big governments

Absolutely. These corporations laugh all the way to the bank as they destroy our privacy and exploit us for profit with surveillance capitalism, destroy our computer freedoms with hardware cryptography only they have the keys for, pollute our web with unending advertising and annoyances driven by "engagement engineering". Someone really ought to check their goddamn audacity. My only complaint is the fines aren't big and frequent enough to surpass their cost of doing business.

I'm sorry, I just don't feel sorry at all about the trillion dollar corporations. Maybe they should try not being monopolists who want to own the platform and their users. Then maybe the state won't feel the need to remind them we are not cattle to be sold to the highest bidder.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people who have no dollars get no vote and deserve nothing? Should we take the same approach with clean air and see what happens?

> people who have no dollars get no vote and deserve nothing? On how messaging works on thousand-dollar phones? Yes.

Nice

If your were in charge when the telephone network was designed, poor people would not even be able to make a phonecall to their middleclass neighbour or senator, they'd have to buy a special Rich People phone

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of market economies is to let people vote with their resources. The alternative of having people vote for a representative body that regulates how they transact is far worse. Best case you get a almost as good outcome. Worst case is 49.9% of people suffer horribly under state enforced "social good".

> Best case you get a almost as good outcome Ah, so you have never heard of market failure, market manipulation, cartels, negative externalities, qash trading, self dealing, insider trading, wage supression agreements, and dozens of others? You do realise that without government to keep fraud and manipulation in check 'free market' collapses into anarchy in one week?

In more political phraseology, that would be tyranny rather than anarchy (that is, without hierarchy)

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the biggest fan of free markets agrees government need to prevent market failures, such as natural monopolies caused by network effects. No, the biggest fans of “free markets” do not think that, in fact, they mock both the general idea of “market failure” and the specific places where people outside their faith identify such failures: https://mises.org/library/market-failure https://mises.org/library/market-fa…

I clicked the first link, which argues that free markets are bad because central banking has failed. Central banking does not exist in a free market. Of course it will fail. Free markets are designed precisely to avoid the inevitable failure of a central authority.

> I clicked the first link, which argues that free markets are bad because central banking has failed.

You may have clicked on it, but I don’t see how you got that message from it. It argues that free markets are good, and that problems attributed to “market failure” are instead failures of other things (like central banking) that are not features of free markets. (All of the other pieces argue variations on the same thing; its plays a central role in the Mises Institute’s economic dogma.)

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#445
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fondly remember iChat from my younger years. XMPP was incredibly powerful -- I would kill for a single client app for signal, telegram, facebook messenger, whatsapp, and more today.

XMPP is still around and alive. Have you seen https://sr.ht/~nicoco/slidge/ ? No need to resort to murder.

The lack of proper group support as indicated by the readme would make this bridge entirely useless to me.

There are individual bridges out there that can fix that, though.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worst case is 49.9% of people suffer horribly under state enforced "social good". As an iPhone, iPad, and iMessage user, please explain how I will "suffer horribly" from being able to interact with the iMessage service from non-Apple devices.

Apple seems to keep spam on iMessage fairly well controlled. If anyone can do iMessage on any device, it is logical that these protections may weaken over time.

That changes nothing. I can't receive unsolicited messages on my xmpp and matrix accounts until I allow the contact invitation.

At worst you could be flooded with invites but that wouldn't be much different than any one of our linkedin accounts and there could be easy mechanism to ban external servers that are reported to allow too many spammers.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#447
post #241

There was a brief period of time where I was able to use IRC, Facebook and MSN from the same client: Pidgin https://pidgin.im/

For a brief period Facebook was the biggest XMPP server, it was fun using OTR[1] on Facebook messenger. I think Whatsapp is still using XMPP under the hood but the server is closed. [1] https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/OTR

OMEMO appears to be superior to OTR last time I looked.

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the world be a better place with interoperable messaging standards and needing only a single messaging app for global communication? Yes. Is this happening organically via market forces? No. That's why. If there were a common standard that was widely supported and cross-app compatible, these regulations wouldn't have happened. Email doesn't cut it for real time messaging. Governments will pursue no brainer p…

> Wouldn't the world be a better place with interoperable messaging standards and needing only a single messaging app for global communication? No. I prefer diversity and the advantages it brings. For example, not being tied to a certain type of account, address or the phone number.

A common protocol doesn't prevent progress or evolution. Look how far browsers have come over the past 20 years, all while working off common HTML, CSS, and JS specs. Would the world be a better place if there were the Apple internet, and the Google internet, instead of a common one?

If there's a vested interest in making something better, it gets better. Walled gardens for basic messaging communication has 0 societal benefit, and there's effectively no downside to adopting a common protocol. Societies are now demanding that obvious problems with easy solutions be solved, and thus the various governments will.

Perhaps some think that the internet would've been better as a series of distributed walled gardens under various single private entities... I can't contend with people who hold that belief. Having easy and common ways to interact with the rest of humanity that anybody can participate in freely seems a far better outcome.

Unfortunately far too many Apple zombies out there that will contort obvious logic to defend them at every opportunity. The distortion field is really something to behold

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fondly remember iChat from my younger years. XMPP was incredibly powerful -- I would kill for a single client app for signal, telegram, facebook messenger, whatsapp, and more today.

I've been thinking about building one. I currently have too many other projects though, so this is going to be my next one, when I'm more or less satisfied with my ActivityPub server. It's so strange that no one has even tried to fill the niche for a modern desktop multi-protocol IM app. The one I have in mind would be properly-desktop though — multiple windows, 100% native controls, complete ignorance towards touchs…

KDE has a built in chat client that seems to do the job most of the time. What's severely lacking there is client support.

Because of it libraries for all kinds of services exist already. KDE Telepathy sounds pretty close to what you're describing (native (Linux) controls, multi window, no touch screen design, plenty of different protocols).

With the KDE project slowly seeming to move towards Matrix rather than XMPP I wonder how long Telepathy will stick around. It can still be a pretty good start for your own chat application, though, as large portions of the work have already been done for you.

An alternative approach I've seen people take is what I'm doing myself: Matrix/XMPP combined with various bridges. That way the chat client only needs to speak one specific protocol. It has its downsides but it does save you from having to develop abstractions over abstractions. You also get multi device support for free without having to scan tons of QR codes if you need to reinstall your client for whatever reason.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#450
post #385

This sounds nice, but when you really think about the consequences it really is not. Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that could make messaging better but this policy is making things harder to implement because it would be impossible to make it interoperate with other messaging apps? I don't get w…

> I don't get why you would regulate such a thing. 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…

> Because there's absolutely no downside to telling Apple it can't artificially make its iMessage platform restricted to Apple devices.

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.

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