So the business is to trick people into thinking they’re speaking with a real person and therefore save money on real support
Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
91–100 of 216 posts
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. We're not completely self-serve right now, so we get to talk with each potential customer and learn about their use case before onboarding them onto the platform. This way, we can prevent use cases that involve spam or abuse.
> We're not completely self-serve right now, "right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale. do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?
We do run checkups and keep very closely in touch with our customers. We don't plan to go self serve in the near future and will most likely still have a very personalized onboarding process.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#93Why shouldn't Apple shut this down to prevent spam in order to defend the Apple customer experience.
We are solving a real user pain point and not promoting spam. Users want a more conversational interface when they're reaching out for customer support during off hours and businesses want a better medium to talk to their customers. There is value created on both sides. There is no reason for Apple to ban us.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#94I think this is bad and antisocial and you should shut it down. I like imessage because businesses cannot easily use it. The people who are most willing to pay for what you provide will do so because they can thereby annoy me in interfaces where other spammers cannot. More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
Treme, on externalities:
> I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#95I think this is bad and antisocial and you should shut it down. I like imessage because businesses cannot easily use it. The people who are most willing to pay for what you provide will do so because they can thereby annoy me in interfaces where other spammers cannot. More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
Being accepted into YC is not something that makes you or your idea invulnerable.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're helping to support conversational customer support agents that can help users better during off-hours and scheduling assistants that can interact with and understand user requests better than current models over SMS/RCS. This is definitely not just spam but instead the future of conversational 2-way messaging.
I don't think anyone would be expressing the same level of concern if the conversations were only started/triggered by an inbound [to you] message. Commingling things like cart abandonment and (actual, user-initiated) conversational messaging dramatically increases the risk that Apple takes action, from my point of view.
Yes, I agree, which is why we try to make the opt-in clear. Use cases like form-fill text back or cart abandonment after the user has opted in and noted down their number are what we primarily focus on
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple wouldn't ban us since we're not doing anything that would qualify as spam or abuse. Even if that hypothetical event does happen, we have SMS/RCS fallback systems in place so no conversations get stopped or lost
As someone who has been in the messaging industry for more than a decade, it sounds naive to think that the litmus test for whether Apple will ban you is whether your traffic qualifies as spam. There is a long history of people trying to get around A2P spam filters / fees / traffic limits / onboarding / KYB requirements by running business messaging on P2P pipes, like you are doing. Some of it has been successful (se…
++ this is going to get banned the moment anyone from Apple sees it
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate? What does that mean in practice? So far what I’ve seen from your service seems to be yet another attempt at blurring the distinction between bots and human interactions, which is generally used for spammy content
We're working to bridge the interaction between humans and bots so that automated conversations feel more natural and comfortable for the end user. In circumstances where the user can't reach an actual human (e.g. off hours support), they're often faced with bots over SMS/RCS that feel non-conversational and therefore can't support them in the right way due to interface. We're working on building agents that can more…
What about RCS/SMS is the "wrong" way of helping the customer?
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if your core offering disappears you can do the same thing that every other SMS-sending thing can do? I also notice you answered the question, but not in the way anyone who needs to depend on this service would want to hear. So yeah you're doing the Mac Mini thing. I'm with landl0rd. This service should not exist, you should feel bad for creating it, and every time I get a spam iMessage I will think about you an…
> anyone who needs to depend on this service would want to hear Are you implying you'd be cool with it if it was Apple sanctioned? That's pretty silly.
Not even the worst reading of their reply would lend to that implication.
It’s pretty obvious that they meant that anyone who depended on their service would/should probably run away kicking and screaming if they were looking for a dependable service that will do what they claim to in the long term.
If they were Apple sanctioned, then at least you’d have some reassurance that the service won’t die randomly one day when Apple has had enough, à la Beeper.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#100> We rotate sending identities, warm them gradually, and cap volume per identity per day to stay well below the heuristics Apple uses to throttle abusive senders. Anyone promising \"unlimited blast\" volume is one ban away from disappearing.
If you are violating Apple's policies, even if they cannot identify each account you create, can they not simply ban you as a legal entity from using their service, and then sue you for damages if you do so anyway?
It's no different from getting a ban from Walmart for trying to sell stuff inside their store.
> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations.