Automattic buys Beeper for $125MM, launches closed-source "privacy" app
https://discuss.online/post/6924461
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Curious how none of the coverage of this launch mention that the app isn’t actually open-source (though they pretend to be an open-source project), which makes all of their claims of “end-to-end encryption” worthless
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When I first heard of Beeper I thought it was interesting. But reading later that they were buying really old iPhones to jail break them for bridging with iMessage I had some doubts. Now they’re bought by the Wordpress people, who also bought Tumblr, and apparently selling user data to AI.. And from what I’ve read about bridges there is no E2EE with Matrix (what Beeper seems to use) to Signal bridge.
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Really, after what he did to Pebble, people shouldn’t have been surprised that Migicovsky didn’t and doesn’t have a plan. You couldn’t trust his word on Pebble, and you couldn’t trust his word on this.
In November 2022, they flubbed my onboarding by not telling me that the onboarding would be a recorded Zoom meeting until I was entering the Zoom meeting. I declined to join the meeting and followed up with questions about their privacy policy. Specifically, I referenced the previous sale of Pebble to a different company, and asked what guarantees there were about the privacy policy staying the same after a sale of the company. Specifically, it’s often one of the first things changed due to “enshittification” when purchased by a larger company, that the “rules” of your relationship to the company change. I never received a response to my questions. I sort of figured the lack of response said as much as a response could have which was “Yeah we don’t have any guarantees” which has been proven by this sale. Like you pointed out, they’re merging Beeper with a closed source project, of which the outcome will likely be… another closed source project.
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This is a mess and it makes me glad I never gave this charlatan a dime.
Thanks for sharing this. Makes me think that the words “open” and “privacy” are sometimes just buzz words used by
people who are stuck in their old habits that conflict with the real meaning of those words.
Spinning up your own Matrix server and bridges was always a better idea, since Beeper was just other people doing that step for you anyway.
Exactly. And now that Slidge has landed in Debian repositories, XMPP and bridges gives more choice to people who want self hosting.
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Does sludge let me use WhatsApp on my matrix client?
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Guess not as Slidge is XMPP. But Matrix bridge with WhatsApp appears to be possible : etke.cc/help/bridges
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“open” and “privacy” are sometimes just buzz words
Yes. Private companies are co-opting the term, and providing source code only after signing an NDA… That qualifies as “Open” but is not FOSS or FLOSS.
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Yeah, Beeper is kind of in a strange place now. I get why they wanted to make their own app to make the bridging experience (especially setup) more seamless. But now with a fully custom closed-source app they are even further off the open path.
What I really want from Beeper is to be able to connect to their bridges from a non-beeper Matrix account with a non-Beeper client. I would happily pay them for the service of managing bridges. I don’t have much interest in having a Beeper-owned account in a custom Beeper client.
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Well, I read on one of the articles that they moved to a custom app so the bridging could be done on your app, so the messages never get decrypted by Beepers servers.
But thats unverified gossip and cannot be verified so long as the repo isnt public
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Yeah, they’ve been talking about that a lot but it isn’t clear if that will be an option or the only option. I wouldn’t be surprised if they only want to keep one method around in the long term though.
Personally I don’t want the bridges to run on my phone as I want the bridges to work even if my phone is off, out of batteries, not connected to the internet or fell into a volcano. Not to mention wasting battery replaying messages while I work on my computer. It isn’t even clear if these on-phone bridges are synced to other devices in the account which would be an absolute deal breaker for me.
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Why don’t you use ems or another service that offers bridges?
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Does EMS offer bridges? Looking at element.io/pricing I don’t see anything. I seem to recall them having a Slack bridge in the past but don’t remember them having a full suite.
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ems.element.io/element-one
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Also not really comparable to Beeper:
Beeper supports:
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In this sub, most shouldn’t even matter 😅
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Unfortunately even in this sub some of us need to talk to people who use privacy-unfriendly options.
So having bridges is a great way to slowly migrate to a private option. I can meet my friends where they are, stop running non-free software and then can slowly move my friends over.
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The encryption can’t be end-to-end anyway. If you send messages between services with different encryption protocols, then you trust Beeper to decrypt your message mid-transit, to then re-encrypt it with the protocol of the recipient.
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It could be if the bridge was on the device
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The whole point of the Beeper App is to let them handle everything, though.
And even if you self-host, you’re still breaking encryption and have to make sure everything is properly secured.
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Not really. If I could have an open source client that will bridge to WhatsApp on my phone, I’d gladly use it.
The reason I don’t is because I don’t run closed source software on my phone.
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Maybe they could have spent some of that money on Simplenote maintenance & development.
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Am i the only one that doesnt tryst Matrix? Something about it makes me suspicious
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What makes it suspicious? It’s a communication protocol.
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Several things, but the issues focus around the company running the show, rather than the API. Their ‘binding rules’ have an outrageous number of loopholes.
Matrix was ‘de-federated’ from Libera.chat because Matrix admins refused to properly moderate their servers, respect privacy, maintain reciprocity, etc. There’s a whole letter explaining the hair ball that occurred.
Their explicit goal is monopoly. Every thing should use our API. Everyone should federate. (Share your data with our servers.)
Companies are companies. Non-profits included. Non-profits are just a way of saying, “We’re not going to the stock market, but we can still funnel money into various pockets… especially our own, or people we want to pay money to.”
Foss/Floss is about ownership, control, modifiability, ect. being handed to whoever owns it. Matrix is about ownership being shared with Matrix.
It’s a wondrous API. Everyone should use it, and set up their own private self-cleaning servers.
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I mean, “if it doesn’t suite your needs – fork it” still stands. As for the lack of moderation – that’s applicable to the official instance, I guess? 'Cause it’s like more than a half of all the users, so no wonder they can’t moderate everything
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no wonder they can’t moderate everything
That would be the case if it wasn’t a flagrant violation like, “These matrix rooms are spying on these chat rooms without announcing the users in the matrix room”, and Matrix refusing to fix it when informed.
Imagine if Matrix did that to their user base. “We’ll occasionally drop in to listen, or pipe your conversation to other people, but you won’t see the, “x joined”, notice. Cheers!” Creepy spying, the polar opposite of privacy.
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That’s the first time I hear about that issue. Any links?
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Matrix was ‘de-federated’ from Libera.chat because Matrix admins refused to properly moderate their servers, respect privacy, maintain reciprocity, etc. There’s a whole letter explaining the hair ball that occurred.
Have at. Timelines in-order.
Tensions and issues coming to a head:
libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling
matrix.org/blog/2023/…/deportalling-libera-chat/
Breaking point you’re looking for:
libera.chat/…/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospectiv…
matrix.org/…/shutting-down-bridge-to-libera-chat/
Today: libera.chat/guides/matrix
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It’s also split up into multiple companies under the same matrix umbrella, and some aren’t non-profit but still get a share of the donations sent to the matrix org. It’s shady and Matrix as a whole just gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
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I’ve never particularly trusted the corporation behind Matrix messaging. They disrespect the GDPR openly in ways not even Discord does (a GDPR compliant deletion request from a British Matrix.org user to Matrix.org will result in no messages or usernames being deleted).
Matrix’s primary goals are keeping your data online as permanently as possible and replicating it across as many services (including more explicitly anti-privacy ones) as possible.
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Wait till you learn about what the Lemmy Deva think about GDPR
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I’m not a fan, but all the alternatives also are sketchy or have usability issues
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I don’t like that it does pretty muh the same thing as XMPP but more inefficiently. Like, my Conduit, already a lighter than Synapse implementation, consumes around 100 megs of RAM compared to Prosody’s 30.
Also it is worrying how prevalent the central matrix.org instance is. Like, the network is federated, but if you defederate from the single central one - a lot of things might break.
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Automattic just buys everything these days.
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Almost… Automattically?
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What product do they own that’s a cash cow??
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This is the interesting part, looking at their list of acquisitions, none of them seems to be generating any revenue. I only know wordpress, simplenote, tumblr and pocketcasts (lifetime user).
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I mean I expect WordPress.com does make money, but I don’t know how it compares to their other sites
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So they’re using the Embracer strategy?
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EEE + Enshitification
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Jetpack
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Closed source. No privacy then.
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text/gemini