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Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

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111–120 of 168 posts

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I would put it as someone who works at Beeper is: only use messaging automations for personal use, and don't use it to spam anyone or do anything you wouldn't do yourself within the app. As long as you don't abuse and keep your usage within the parameters of any human, you'll be fine.

...until Meta decides they want to offer this kind of thing themselves and ban everyone else. Building your SaaS on top of someone else's SaaS is always a gamble, especially if said product is directly sold to users already and not a pure b2b intermediate.

Since recently Meta offers this as per European Union mandate (Digital Markets Act, DMA). For both Whatsapp and Facebook messaging. [0]

Now there are a lot of implementation requirements, basically forcing you to have some kind of messaging provider. Therefore difficult to apply for an open source solution. However there is such an interface.

[0] https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability...

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#112
post #96

Reading a lot about people getting banned here for not using the official client, but doesn't Whatsapp have to be interoperable now (at least in the EU due to new legislation) ? At least Whatsapp itself shows ad banners that you can now connect other messaging clients into Whatsapp, so it should be normal that other clients can equally access Whatsapp.

Officially interoperating with them is extremely onerous, to the point where their mechanism borders malicious compliance, as far as I remember. In any case, official interoperability is only for third-party messengers communicating with WhatsApp users, not for automation or bots, as I understand, so it's not a replacement for things like this project.

Indeed, more information here: https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability...

It seems Meta is able to set some rules about the interoperability making it very difficult for an FOSS implementation to emerge. Additionally organizations like Signal though technically interested in this interoperability have stated they won't lower their security standards for this.

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#113
As someone that's written some apps using official WA for Business accounts, I would strongly advise against any 3rd party tools for automating WA.

Whatsapp has some really stringent requirements on any kind of automation. E.g. Not messaging anyone automatically unless they messaged you with 24 hours, in fact, this is explicitly blocked if you use Meta's API. You have to use message templates in this case.

Also, any bots need to be verified with Meta etc.

And the TOS has gotten more strict recently, not less strict. So buyer beware here, Meta is really protective over reverse engineering WA protocol or automating it, so you can easily get yourself blocked or banned here.

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#114
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider marketing use to be spam, and this is what the API is primarily meant for. I understand that WhatsApp is kinda special in that it effectively replaced SMS in some parts of the world, but IMO this needs to be looked at through the lens of other Meta effort. The same is the case with Facebook/Messenger, and has been since before WhatsApp has been a (Meta) thing - they offer multiple different official ways t…

Who mentioned marketing? It's used for package tracking, order updates, bookings and so on where I live.

Not where I live, presumably not in the US, and it doesn't look like the main use case emphasized in the developer/integration documentation.

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#115
I tried creating a whatsapp "bot" which would just send notifications for my Jellyfin server. It was a bureaucratic nightmare - creating dev accounts, creating some sort of "project", then it was requiring I register it as a business as though the only valid use case for creating an app for WhatsApp is a business, then it required me to verify my identify and upload documents.

I just switched to Signal.

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#117

I just use telegram. Just yesterday I setup a bot which is easy via botfather And also, setup an app (claude built it but I had to fiddle with it, it works like pagerduty) but uses cloudflate worker to push downtime/errors (via fcm) in production (from graphana) via webhooks to "full screen, by pass dnd, alerts, with loud music, this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0IQBWWabuU ) I named the app "Siren". It's not…

> I just use telegram. And how do you just get everyone you want to speak to use telegram?

Live in a country like Ukraine where everyone uses Telegram

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#118
post #75
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is unsafe anyway.

zuck can read your whatsapp messages, at this point I think I'd rather criminals and the government read them instead

yeah who wants marginally regulated oligarchs -- Give me fully unregulated criminals!

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#119
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

zuck can read your whatsapp messages, at this point I think I'd rather criminals and the government read them instead

WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. No one at Meta can read your messages.

How are we sure that it is really end-to-end encrypted?

Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI

#120
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, i see, is it the same for facebook messenger and instagram, imessage, etc?

Messenger seems to be properly multi-device, but you pay for this by some PIN code bullshit (maybe they removed that, I haven't seen a popup about this for over a year now?) and having to sync chat history in the background, through a process that is, of course, broken and unreliable. I'm actually still jaded about this. Messenger worked fine before they broke it by introducing E2EE; it took years for them to fix the…

It's still broken if you're like me and you clear cookies

"Let's take people's years-long history between each other and just utterly break it. Why? 'privacy'" but they've never cared about it, they're opportunistic fucks. It's Zuckerberg's company to do with it "as he wishes" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818

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