I was on the beta testing team and have been using Beeper for a little over two years now.
The convenience of having an application to house all of your chat networks is amazing.
Pidgin. That failed. Then we have matrix. That kinda failed. And now beeper?
I don’t know…
Pidgin didn’t use bridges, it tried to be “all the possible clients in one”… with closed source protocols… which went south, fast. It still works for some, though.
Matrix is running just fine, it doesn’t have the infinite flexibility of XMPP which made XMPP clients incompatible with each other, so as long as it doesn’t jump the shark, it’s just a matter of time to drive adoption.
How did Matrix fail?
It’s the base for numerous messengers used by governments around the world, it has a userbase of more than 70 million core users (not counting the various closed messengers). Various competitors (e.g. Rocket Chat) have changed their base to Matrix.
And Beeper is Matrix with Bridges (which you absolutely could deploy yourself). In theory anyone could recreate the Beeper functionality with existing other apps/bridges AND be able to communicate with Beeper on their native standard - Matrix.
See my reaction above (https://kbin.melroy.org/m/[email protected]/t/11834/-/comment/90707)
Well… I’m using pidgin right now.
Great! Good to hear you use Pidgin! I love using it in the past as well… I now use Matrix mainly. Should I go back to Pidgin?
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ow lame… It’s non-free??
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Double lame…!
You can use any matrix client you want with it. The closed source one is just making bridging more straightward and adding some little quality of life features.
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Why do you feel like matrix has failed? I joined it recently and to me it looks like it’s kinda growing.
Well… I said ‘kinda failed’. Synapse is still way too slow. And the new dendrite server is still not up to spec. Joining large rooms is still gives me a headache. I can’t easily protect DDoS or spam accounts. I was forced to basically close registrations my Matrix server. And Dendrite is not yet production ready which is a shame… Don’t get me wrong, I do like Matrix in general. I just hope my previous remarks are taken seriously by their devs.
Idk, that’s more of a “not yet finished” thing rather than “failed” imo
yea… you are right. It “sort of failed” at some point, because I’m waiting for Matrix to solve these issues for more then 6 years now… basically since the start…
Beeper is Matrix in a trenchcoat, judging by their Github page.
So much for waiting on the wait-list… But I’m excited!!!
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.
The connections to the apps are all open source, as the other user said. And you can self host it too if you want to go that route
In the back of it, it seems to be a series of Matrix bridges https://github.com/beeper
I was about to say, I do this already with Matrix.
oh sweet. I care far more about the backend than frontend
But how do you know that the frontend is trustworthy? People assume that frontends only talk to one backend.
Web should have thought people otherwise, but for most people it’s pretty indistinguishable from magic.
I see what you did there!
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!
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Yeah, I should have clarified that. Hopefully the EU regulation regarding messaging interoperability removes this (currently unavoidable) flaw.
Yes you should. Because it’s not e2e encrypted then.
Beeper’s server set up is actually a lot more complicated than just standard Synapse at this point. When they say you can “self host Beeper” that’s really not accurate at this point at all. All of their 3rd party chat bridges are dynamically spun up on a per user basis with hungryserv and those servers operate in parallel with a synapse server for Matrix interoperability all behind a roomserv server. Here’s a presentation that one of their lead developers created regarding their new architecture.
Most of that extra stuff is there to handle user contact privacy and security with the bridges, which is fair. I don’t have any interest in self hosting beepers full setup, I want to get the functionality of multiple messaging services in one client - which I have, with my self-hosted matrix instance and the bridges they help develop and maintain.
I wish all of it was open source, but I did feel it necessary to head off comments that imply that the entire thing is closed source. Their implementation around dynamic servers and isolated containers spinning up isn’t really the bit that seems relevant regarding user privacy with regards to data scraping or anything. There are a lot of comments in here implying it’s fully proprietary, but there’s a lot more nuance to it than that, as you point out.
Personally, I think it’d be nice if you could self-host just the bridge instances and connect them with beeper yourself, so that the part that isn’t e2e encrypted is running on software you can validate and hardware you control.
Personally, I think it’d be nice if you could self-host just the bridge instances and connect them with beeper yourself, so that the part that isn’t e2e encrypted is running on software you can validate and hardware you control.
I 100% agree this would be a great solution. That’s what I thought this page was going to be at first until I kept reading and realized it’s just a config guide for the Matrix Ansible setup. I wish they didn’t say “self host Beeper” on that page at all because self hosting Matrix has absolutely nothing to do with the Beeper service other than their devs built the bridges that they’re showing you how to set up with Matrix.
A bit off topic, but is this dev unironically using thin, light gray text on a white background?
It looks like they’re slides from a powerpoint style presentation… in the following frames, the light grey text is legible. Still, not a good way to present that data, heh. Stuff like that irks me so bad
Element seems like a perfectly good client to me.
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?
Then run your own matrix instance with these bridges that they maintain for the community.
That still doesn’t fix the e2e problem. Just because only me, and let’s hope not too many others who manage to break into the instance, can mitm everything, doesn’t make the mitm go away.
There really should be a standard, or at least a set of standards, on how to do e2e, so the bridges would only need to route the messages.
tell me how this is better than simply changing all my usernames to “CorsicanGuppy is only on Jabber now, so reach out there” and shutting them all down.
(Actually I liked when pidgin worked, as I could receive on walled platforms and respond on open platforms)
But still, continuing to use closed platforms allows them to perpetuate. Sendmail killed bitnet, and we need to only continue that trend.
This looks like a promising application; and as long as the business models stay sustainable and the company remains ethical; it should be a good place.
I’ll bite and queue up.
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.
Not in my case. I don’t care about the bells and whistles that messenging apps keep adding, I just want to send and receive messages.
I used to say that too. I loved good old SMS. Then I got a job with a metal roof and suddenly I needed something to work over wifi
Having a metal roof doesn’t mean you need stickers or chat backgrounds - even the minimal features of Whatsapp and co in a generic app is fine for me.
Would beeper give me access to iMessage without having an iDevice?
Yes! One of the main reasons lots of people use Beeper
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!
Text, images, videos…I believe there is, or will be soon, video conferencing.
My parents are going to be getting a lot more dog videos soon!
Damn…I’m going to be getting a lot of dog videos from my parents.
The last time I heard the word beeper it referred to a pager. You kids know what a pager was?
It’s how you used to buy weed.
Correct: It was the dealers best friend.
I had a pager in highschool. 🧓
It’s what those ancient iPads, I think they were called b’oks had right? ;-)
You kids know what a pager was?
Yes.
Lol.
I owned one for a while.
That brought up some memories I had suppressed lol.
Some time ago I found my old CocaCola Beeper. That time might’ve been 10+ years ago…
Lol.
Kinda funny how quickly those disappeared when cell phones came along.
Got in yesterday. iMessage is working fine through it. I wonder for how long if this gets traction.
This scans as VCs trying to enclose the internet. If you wanted a communications protocol standard
- we have many of these
- what’s wrong with ActivityPub?
This is using matrix. You can even connect to it from any matrix client.
ActivityPub is more of a social network protocol rather than a messaging protocol. It assumes most data sent through it will get public by default and has very little encryption set up for it, let along E2EE. Now Matrix is a better use case for an open protocol like that and also offers bridges between other chat networks (I wouldn’t be surprised if Beeper has Matrix under the hood).
There’s no reason any of the fields have to be sent cleartext, except maybe the inreplyto property
it is matrix yes! and they’re contributing back to the upstream bridges
from their website:
Remember this XKCD comic? That’s why we built Beeper on the open source chat protocol Matrix. Unlike other chat networks, there is no lock-in. You’re free to use open source Matrix clients to connect to Beeper, or download your data and move to a different Matrix server and continue chatting with your friends on Beeper.
Beeper contributes back to the Matrix community. All of our Matrix bridges are open source on our Github. Don’t want to pay for Beeper? Self-host your own instance for free.
It’s almost not even fair to say they’re merely contributing back to the upstream bridges. Most of the bridges would not exist at all without the Beeper developers.
It’s also kind of funny that the section of their website you quoted still has language that implies you have to pay for Beeper when it’s been free for months at this point. The primary reason to self host Matrix at this point is for privacy and complete control. And self hosting Matrix is only free if you use existing hardware and I would recommend a cloud instance for most people.
what’s wrong with ActivityPub?
End-to-end encryption is still a work in progress there, but also that’s more of a social media protocol than a chat protocol.
Just a shame their android app needs play services for notifications, even though Element upstream does not
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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On my end the post had 0 comments lol, but yes I see when I open it in a browser that my app is bugging out
“pebble notification support” then show just the generic default support with no action? (No black dot on the right). I can reply to WhatsApp messages using the pebble but here doesn’t look like, seems just basic support handled by the pebble app
Pretty funny too, considering they guy behind Beeper is also the original guy behind Pebble.
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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their clients are proprietary but it’s built on matrix (federated chat kinda like xmpp) and their bridges (things that connect matrix to other protocols) are open source
they say you can use any matrix client, and that you can host your own home server with their bridges
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I have my own matrix server that I primarily use like beeper and bridge all my chats together. Even using some of their bridges, it’s been pretty reliable for years.
I know that a few people are hating on the closed source client, but that feels unfair to me. They provide lots of open code in the form of bridges which is really the meat of the offering. Their client just makes using the bridges easier for the lay person. The bridges are super easy to use without it, invite the bridge bot to a chat room, type login and do what it says, then type login-matrix and your pretty much done.
The I suspect that the same people who are displeased about the closed client also like using tailscale which is generally pretty popular but has closed source clients on Windows and Mac as well as the server (though all support the open source headscale server)
yeah… pragmatism beats purity every time: they’re doing some great work, but to do that great work they have to fund it somehow… i think that open sourcing all of the functional components (the bridges) and keeping the shiny UI closed is a pretty good way of doing that!
i guess i get not wanting to used closed source clients too, but it’s shades of grey: people shouldn’t hate on them for keeping 1 part closed source!
Only problem is, the average user gets hooked to the shiny UI, not to the invisible backend.
When Microsoft bought Skype, they switched from a secure P2P network to a server-centered network easy to mitm… and the majority of users said nothing. Later on, they switched a few UI elements, and suddenly there was a user uproar.
If Beeper gains any traction, a shiny privative UI is their out to monetize/enshittify the service.
sure, but an open source UI isn’t going to change that… they’d just close the source!
sure you can fork it, but you can also just copy the UI to an open source clone
imagine if twitter were activitypub: kinda like having an OSS backend with a proprietary front end… i’d bet the move to mastodon would be far quicker… network effects keep people on twitter… same here with OSS backend: we can reimplement the UI and people will have the same experience
Based on the history of how Google Chat used XMPP to federate and basically siphon users into its closed UI, then defederate… I no longer trust anyone with a closed UI that’s planning to offer “extra value” to its users.
If someone closed their open UI, you can always fork the last open version, which at least gives you an even start.
If
Twitter𝕏 were to switch to ActivityPub… I’d actually worry about people flocking back to 𝕏, back to their old networks and recommendation algorithms. Guess it’s no longer possible, since 𝕏 pretty much destroyed the old Twitter environment, but I’d still worry… and with Elon wanting to make 𝕏 a “social network for everything”, that sounds dangerously close to ActivityPub.
“Best chat client on the planet” gives me dark premonitions. It’s kind of low-key aggressive language that belays a primary lust for expansion.
They will be offering a premium subscription offer for more bells and whistles other than the free option…I don’t know anything about user betrayals conducted by Beeper.
Proprietary clients.
I don’t understand the concern here.
You have no way of verifying that the client is only doing what it claims. The Open Source community is highly suspicious of proprietary software, doubly so when it’s based off of Open Source code.
If youre okay with that then no worries, but ofr myself and many others it’s an absolute deal breaker.
I’ll take the risk knowing what I know about the Beeper people that I’ve been working with for over two years.
Sounds reasonable to me
That’s fine… for you, right now.
But I (and probably most users) don’t know them, over time people come and go, some even change who they are, businesses get sold. Only open source persists.
Thankfully all of the Matrix bridges they created for Beeper are open source.
“I know these guys, trust me” is not a valid security assessment.
If you know the team, then that’s a pretty good reason to trust them. Only works if you know the team, though.
To be fair, the client they provide to make bridging more accessible is proprietary, however you can fire up a fresh copy of element and connect it if you want and just use the text interface.
The clients are closed so that they have something to sell and profit. Not everyone can afford to give their time away for free.
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Is there a reason you couldn’t use either use a self hosted or the public hosted copy of element or an Android/iOS app and connect it directly to the beeper synapse/dendrite server?
Their clients are just closed forks of element anyways.
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Sorry, I’ll never use a service asking me upfront my phone number “for security purposes.” Fuck off beeper!
Yep, immediately closed the page when I saw that in the sign up.
Zero reason they need my phone number, fuck off
