The slow death of Beeper continues, and more senators want to get involved
Malcolm OwenBeeper Mini
As more users find themselves unable to access Beeper Mini's iMessage bridge, more senators have waded into the matter, with them asking the Department of Justice if Apple's actions constitute antitrust violations.
Once again, Beeper Mini finds itself knocked off the iMessage network, with Apple keen not to allow the Android app access. After an initial takedown by Apple, the app returned to life with some slight issues, but now it's found to be unusable by many users.
Posting to Reddit on Sunday evening, Beeper offered an update to the situation, advising that more than 60% of Beeper Mini and Cloud users weren't able to send or receive iMessages. The team claimed it was "fighting to get this fixed."
For the moment, the team added that users may see emails about a "new Mac" being added to their Apple ID. Beeper insists it doesn't "use Mac servers anymore," but that its bridge appears as if it were a Mac to Apple.
At the time of publication, complete access hasn't been restored.
More senators
Following the entry of Senator Elizabeth Warren into the public fight between Beeper and Apple, more senators have jumped on the bandwagon to attack the iPhone maker over its blocking of Beeper from the iMessage network.
In a joint letter to DoJ Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, four senators and representatives have co-signed a request for an investigation into Apple's "potentially anticompetitive conduct."
Senator @amyklobuchar + @SenMikeLee + @RepJerryNadler @RepKenBuck sent this to DOJ regarding ongoing fight betwn Beeper Mini vs Apple "to investigate whether this potentially anticompetitive conduct by Apple violated antitrust laws." I'll have the full story on @CBSMornings tmrw pic.twitter.com/pj6ef432TK
— Jo Ling Kent (@jolingkent) December 18, 2023
The co-signees are Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Representative Ken Buck (R-CO).
The letter briefly recounts the fight, including Apple's admittance of taking action citing security and privacy concerns, before using it to claim Apple was doing so for other reasons.
"Apple executives have previously admitted the company leverages iMessage to lock users into Apple's ecosystem of devices and services," the group writes. "Beeper Mini threatened to reduce this leverage creating more competitive mobile applications market, which in turn a more competitive mobile device market [sic]"
It goes on to reference a Department of Commerce report that described Apple as a "gatekeeper" with a "monopoly position" in the mobile app ecosystem. It also quotes the Department of Commerce as declaring "antitrust enforcement is essential for ensuring competition in the mobile app ecosystem."
There's also an older mention of testimony from Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky, dating back to a session of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights from December 2015. At the time, Migicovsky was concerned that dominant messaging services would "impose barriers to interoperability and prevent Beeper entering and delivering services that consumers want."
Citing interoperability and interconnection as "key drivers of competition and consumer choice" in various industries, the letter insists consumers "will never benefit from competition if dominant firms are allowed to snuff out that competition at its incipiency."
The lawmakers go on to offer concern that Apple's blocks harm competition and will "discourage future innovation and investment in interoperable messaging services." Therefore, the group refers the matter to the DoJ's antitrust division for an investigation into whether Apple violated antitrust laws.
William Gallagher
Andrew Orr
Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
Charles Martin
32 Comments
Anti-competitive? I simply see Beeper as being malware. It’s software that disguises itself as real Messages, something that it isn’t. It’s time for members of Congress to go back to school and take some computer classes. It’s also time these self-proclaimed champions for people (actually anti-Apple people) take some computer security classes to understand what Beeper is doing. I see it as a Trojan horse, faking what they really are.
Beeper basically seems like a man-in-the-middle attack disguised as a feature. It intercepts secure messages and makes them readable.
Congresspeople are SO dumb. Apple is protecting its property and me. I don’t want random apps to have access to Apple servers and neither do they. That’s a major security hole and I hope Apple locks it down for good.
This entire thing is ridiculous and makes my head hurt.
But for the developers of Beeper to position that iOS users are too stupid to use another messaging service, or that you can’t set a “default" is hot garbage. Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp all install without issue on iOS devices, as does Facebook Messenger. Messaging apps don’t need to be set to default. Just put the d*mnded app on your dock, and arrange with your friends which messaging app to use. The whole hair on fire is that Android’s default text messaging app and iOS’s default text messaging app have minor, trivial hiccups when interacting with each other, and if that’s an issue to the point you are raging to senators about it, you really need to go touch grass. And if you’re one of those people who, apparently, “bubble shame," you also need to go touch grass, and on your way, go pound sand. To those of you who are being “shamed” for the color of your text bubble, you need to find better friends.
And to consider this “anti-trust”? Are you kidding me? You’re going to argue with me that it is anti-competitive that someone’s chat bubble is green and doesn’t have the identical cosmetics? This is the bar? Let’s ignore Amazon’s anticompetitive practices, which have shut down thousands of small business shops. Let’s ignore Microsoft shutting down Mac games from studios they acquired. Let’s ignore Disney owning almost the entire entertainment industry. No. The hill to die on is: green chat bubbles. I can’t even.
Really makes me wonder who's funding them. To generate this kind of media hype and political interest in something so insignificant reeks of well-connected investors.
How about we investigate why tech companies which truly innovate and create new products/services that are of benefit to people can't generate as much interest as a company which reverse engineers and clones an existing product?