Would like to point out that this was acquired by Automattic, who’s CEO is notably transphobic. They repeatedly ban transgender transition progress pics (fully clothed) for violating the “sexual content policy” of Tumblr.
Apparently this acquisition happened on the same day as this post (not accusing, just saying it’s completely reasonable if you did not know about it, I didn’t know either until earlier)
Honestly I understand where you’re coming from but I’m going to be a bit pragmatic, it’s free, it centralizes all my shit chat apps into one “shit app” (the app is excellent so far) I won’t bridge it to signal because that would be my safe app but for insta, messenger, Discord, telegram and even SMS/RCS I have no issues
Fair enough, I like to try to avoid the CEOs that strike home for me when possible, even if that’s a losing battle. Beeper honestly sounds really convenient, I hope the CEO lets the team stay mostly independent on their choices for it
It’s not proprietary, lol. You can download and deploy each of their bridges yourself to your own servers.
Source: been using their WhatsApp, Discord, and Signal bridges for over a year. I use Github sponsors to pay for development, as I appreciate how great they are.
The only closed source part of their stack is their client, which you don’t have to use.
Also, they’re some of the most prolific contributors to Matrix outside of Element. The emoji picker in Element was literally PR’ed by Tulir.
Love it when folk see people trying to make money off OSS and immediately resort to hysterics. It really makes closed source development look appealing if you’re going to be damned by idealogues regardless of whether you release the source or not.
But don’t services like Discord forbid third party clients?
Me waiting for inflation to slowly increase Discord’s yearly revenue until it tips into the legally defined Gatekeeper™ status under the EU Digital Markets Act so they’d be playing with fire if they banned people for using interoperability apps.
Alright, I got to ask. Having one app for all these services sounds great. I remember some drama around it though, don’t recall the details. So what am I missing, is this actually good news?
Its not open source but neither are most of the apps it connects to.
There’s a lot of FUD in this comments section, so I’d like to clear the air. I’m pretty big on OSS myself, so it pains me to see a company doing all the right things get lambasted like this.
Beeper is just a Matrix server running in tandem with a series of custom, open source bridges written by Beeper. The value proposition is not having to deploy a Matrix server yourself, and not having to deploy each bridge yourself.
However, if you want to do that you absolutely can. I’ve been running Synapse + a subset of their bridges for a couple years now (the WhatsApp one being the oldest), and they are fantastic.
The devs contribute back to Matrix all the time and are great about supporting the spec as a responsible third party.
Their only closed source software is their client, which is - by definition - only written to work with their servers and not generic Matrix servers (e.g. It’s just a preconfigured matrix client which expects each bridge to be deployed, and doesn’t ask you for things like what server you want). As a result, you wouldn’t want to use it with your own stack; you can just pick one of the myriad OSS clients available for Matrix and go with that. I use SchildiChat, for example.
I don’t understand why, after doing all this work and publishing the source online for free (free as in freedom), they aren’t allowed to offer a preconfigured service to non tech savvy folk?
Honest question: Shouldn’t they be paid for their work?
Edit: And, please, stop asking questions like “How do they connect to X/Y/Z, anyway?” - just go read the source and see for yourself. These are the good guys working completely in the open, and you’re treating them as if Twitter just wrote a chat app.
The not cool parts just relate to any sort of hosted bridge. If you don’t trust them with decrypting messages on their end, then don’t give them your data - there are no bridges capable of doing that, anywhere.
So it really comes down to “trust someone else with your data, or host it yourself”; and if you’re - understandably - frustrated with those options blame companies like WhatsApp or Discord that make it nigh impossible to integrate their services with outside networks.
Functionally, these bridges just forward your content to a library acting like a headless client - there’s no way to encrypt that as the reverse engineered clients are not libraries and need to take raw input. You can’t end to end encrypt it as the client is one of the “ends”.
As an example, the WhatsApp bridge uses WhatsApp web as a backend, and has all the limitations of WA web.
As a result, I find the expectations to be a bit unrealistic.
Does the whole encryption/decryption thing still bother you if you self host?
I tried out the app, the value there is that it’s ready to go straight away, though I took it all down again because my messages being unencrypted on someone else’s server makes me uneasy. May end up self hosting it for that reason and not using anything closed source
Self-hosting on a hosting provider… it’s not my hardware, but maybe some trust.
OpenSource with non-reproducible builds, even self-hosted at home, little trust.
Local bridges, OpenSource, with reproducible builds, and a 3rd party audit, most trust.
All software can have bugs, and we’ve seen what cases like xz-util can bring, so I would rather have no decrypting bridges at all, particularly for sensitive information… but for random private chats, “mostly trusted” sounds like enough.
Public conversations (like this one) are fine going through random bridges, but I feel like bridging with E2EE networks, is subverting user expectations.
tl;dr: It does breach Discord TOS. It’s rarely enforced, but still use at your own risk.
It connects via the bot api with permission “send and receive messages on your behalf” on your user account which itself doesn’t break TOS, but it toes the line of what discord considers “self botting”, and you’re technically logging messages which is against their TOS
So yes it definitely breaks TOS, Discord rarely enforces it against it, but it’s still a use at your own risk thing. Many will say it’s perfectly safe to use but there’s still a risk to be considered for how much you value your account. It’s in the same risk area as third party clients even though it isn’t one.
I don’t value my account so I use things like this and third party/modified clients and haven’t been banned for years, but any day now I and anyone else using these could be banned.
Discord’s own Linux client is kinda ass and keeps breaking my build using old insecure electron versions/forcing you to update before you can use the app while not being up to date in my package manager
Gotta use a custom client anyway to keep my sanity intact
I’ll keep using them until if i get banned one day, try to make another account, then just move if I can’t because without custom clients discord is just death by a thousand papercuts imo
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Would like to point out that this was acquired by Automattic, who’s CEO is notably transphobic. They repeatedly ban transgender transition progress pics (fully clothed) for violating the “sexual content policy” of Tumblr.
Apparently this acquisition happened on the same day as this post (not accusing, just saying it’s completely reasonable if you did not know about it, I didn’t know either until earlier)
A message from tumbler’s CEO
Wow! That’s one annoying video!
Love the CEO sketches! And they’re not even in the top five things Brennan has done, probably!
Honestly I understand where you’re coming from but I’m going to be a bit pragmatic, it’s free, it centralizes all my shit chat apps into one “shit app” (the app is excellent so far) I won’t bridge it to signal because that would be my safe app but for insta, messenger, Discord, telegram and even SMS/RCS I have no issues
Fair enough, I like to try to avoid the CEOs that strike home for me when possible, even if that’s a losing battle. Beeper honestly sounds really convenient, I hope the CEO lets the team stay mostly independent on their choices for it
Unless I am missing something, it did not send Signal messages to Android Auto, and that is kind of a deal breaker for me.
Sadly doesn’t appear to be usable for SMS by Google Fi users who have web sync enabled. Guess I’ll be holding off.
Without iMessage, right?
Some self-hosters have been able to get iMessage working.
What is it lol
Unified chat app…combines almost all chat networks into one.
Thanks buddy
Sure thing
I’m not your buddy, guy!
https://youtu.be/m1JakODvYhA?t=20s
Add iMessage and Viber and I’m in.
thanks but I don’t need this proprietary shit
It’s not proprietary, lol. You can download and deploy each of their bridges yourself to your own servers.
Source: been using their WhatsApp, Discord, and Signal bridges for over a year. I use Github sponsors to pay for development, as I appreciate how great they are.
The only closed source part of their stack is their client, which you don’t have to use.
Also, they’re some of the most prolific contributors to Matrix outside of Element. The emoji picker in Element was literally PR’ed by Tulir.
Love it when folk see people trying to make money off OSS and immediately resort to hysterics. It really makes closed source development look appealing if you’re going to be damned by idealogues regardless of whether you release the source or not.
That seems really exciting! But don’t services like Discord forbid third party clients?
I’ve been using Beeper with a Discord bridge for three years now. No problems.
Beeper isn’t a Discord client.
Kind of is though, if it quacks like a duck
My arse quacks like a duck
Me waiting for inflation to slowly increase Discord’s yearly revenue until it tips into the legally defined Gatekeeper™ status under the EU Digital Markets Act so they’d be playing with fire if they banned people for using interoperability apps.
I guess I can finally use proper WhatsApp web on iPad 😂
Alright, I got to ask. Having one app for all these services sounds great. I remember some drama around it though, don’t recall the details. So what am I missing, is this actually good news?
Its not open source but neither are most of the apps it connects to.
Edit: Found a comment in another thread that sums up valid concerns https://feddit.nl/comment/8763492
See this comment by @derin@lemmy.beru.co
Seems like it’s not ready yet
There’s a lot of FUD in this comments section, so I’d like to clear the air. I’m pretty big on OSS myself, so it pains me to see a company doing all the right things get lambasted like this.
Beeper is just a Matrix server running in tandem with a series of custom, open source bridges written by Beeper. The value proposition is not having to deploy a Matrix server yourself, and not having to deploy each bridge yourself.
However, if you want to do that you absolutely can. I’ve been running Synapse + a subset of their bridges for a couple years now (the WhatsApp one being the oldest), and they are fantastic.
The devs contribute back to Matrix all the time and are great about supporting the spec as a responsible third party.
Their only closed source software is their client, which is - by definition - only written to work with their servers and not generic Matrix servers (e.g. It’s just a preconfigured matrix client which expects each bridge to be deployed, and doesn’t ask you for things like what server you want). As a result, you wouldn’t want to use it with your own stack; you can just pick one of the myriad OSS clients available for Matrix and go with that. I use SchildiChat, for example.
I don’t understand why, after doing all this work and publishing the source online for free (free as in freedom), they aren’t allowed to offer a preconfigured service to non tech savvy folk?
Honest question: Shouldn’t they be paid for their work?
Edit: And, please, stop asking questions like “How do they connect to X/Y/Z, anyway?” - just go read the source and see for yourself. These are the good guys working completely in the open, and you’re treating them as if Twitter just wrote a chat app.
All of that needed to be said. Thank you.
Not sure there is much FUD, let me see if I can sum up the points:
TL;DR: Sounds like a reasonable way to move unencrypted messages around… but falls short of fixing the problem of having secure interoperable E2EE.
Should they get paid for it? Probably, if you find that useful.
(¹: if there is any bridge capable of forwarding encrypted messages without decrypting, please correct me)
The not cool parts just relate to any sort of hosted bridge. If you don’t trust them with decrypting messages on their end, then don’t give them your data - there are no bridges capable of doing that, anywhere.
So it really comes down to “trust someone else with your data, or host it yourself”; and if you’re - understandably - frustrated with those options blame companies like WhatsApp or Discord that make it nigh impossible to integrate their services with outside networks.
Functionally, these bridges just forward your content to a library acting like a headless client - there’s no way to encrypt that as the reverse engineered clients are not libraries and need to take raw input. You can’t end to end encrypt it as the client is one of the “ends”.
As an example, the WhatsApp bridge uses WhatsApp web as a backend, and has all the limitations of WA web.
As a result, I find the expectations to be a bit unrealistic.
Does the whole encryption/decryption thing still bother you if you self host?
I tried out the app, the value there is that it’s ready to go straight away, though I took it all down again because my messages being unencrypted on someone else’s server makes me uneasy. May end up self hosting it for that reason and not using anything closed source
Somewhat. It’s kind of a gradation:
All software can have bugs, and we’ve seen what cases like xz-util can bring, so I would rather have no decrypting bridges at all, particularly for sensitive information… but for random private chats, “mostly trusted” sounds like enough.
Public conversations (like this one) are fine going through random bridges, but I feel like bridging with E2EE networks, is subverting user expectations.
Seems like they did good until now. I’m not confident, even skeptical, that will keep going after the acquisition though.
Gravatar was a great, independent, minimal service. Now it’s a horrendous, bloated service.
I hope they continue to do good, but am also skeptical.
And, man, I miss the old Gravatar.
Obligatory https://xkcd.com/927/
This is not applicable here, since Beeper is “just” Matrix + Bridges + Simplified UX!
Indeed. More like talking 14 competing standards and shoving them under one gui… and I’m here for it. I miss the days of trillian and gaim.
I was a Trillian user as well.
Be so nice to notify your contacts about breaking e2ee then, will ya
The Android version has a local bridge that does not break ee2e for Signal. It is an experimental option, but it was easy to turn on and use
It’s nice that the option exists, I didn’t know that. But I have to say, I’m still not a fan of the overall concept of bridges
How is beeper reading my Discord DMs without breaching Discord TOS?
e: Their ToS and privacy clauses are way too opaque for something that’s not open source. No from me, Ma’am.
It’s open source, here’s the code. It uses the discordgo library to connect to Discord and read your DMs.
e: You’re free to download and deploy the source yourself, and write your own ToS. That’s the nice part of open source software.
That’s the source code for the Discord bridge, I’m talking about Beeper
you can use any opensource matrix client with your beeper account
You were asking how it interacts with Discord. That is the code.
Beyond that it’s running a version of Synapse and has its own client - the latter being optional.
I’ve been using a Discord bridge with Beeper for three years with no problems.
That’s not what I asked
tl;dr: It does breach Discord TOS. It’s rarely enforced, but still use at your own risk.
It connects via the bot api with permission “send and receive messages on your behalf” on your user account which itself doesn’t break TOS, but it toes the line of what discord considers “self botting”, and you’re technically logging messages which is against their TOS
So yes it definitely breaks TOS, Discord rarely enforces it against it, but it’s still a use at your own risk thing. Many will say it’s perfectly safe to use but there’s still a risk to be considered for how much you value your account. It’s in the same risk area as third party clients even though it isn’t one.
I don’t value my account so I use things like this and third party/modified clients and haven’t been banned for years, but any day now I and anyone else using these could be banned.
Discord’s own Linux client is kinda ass and keeps breaking my build using old insecure electron versions/forcing you to update before you can use the app while not being up to date in my package manager
Gotta use a custom client anyway to keep my sanity intact
Same, basically unusable without them for me.
I’ll keep using them until if i get banned one day, try to make another account, then just move if I can’t because without custom clients discord is just death by a thousand papercuts imo
I’ve already had Discord accounts snupped out from under me for not giving them my phone number, I don’t wanna give them a real reason to ban me 😅