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.
Ok but why is the thumbnail a scene from Midsommar…
Came here to ask this… (Also love that movie tho)
Ok but why is the thumbnail a scene from Midsommar…
Probably because the leading image is taken from Midsommar.
Pidgin. That failed. Then we have matrix. That kinda failed. And now beeper?
I don’t know…
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
Beeper is Matrix in a trenchcoat, judging by their Github page.
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/technology@beehaw.org/t/11834/-/comment/90707)
deleted by creator
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.
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?
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.
The biggest question of all,- Is it Open source ?
My phone will only installs opensource apps.
All of the Matrix bridges, written for use with Beeper, are open source.
If you have to name the parts that are open-source, then you’re not open-source.
Translation: “no”
Looks like the client isn’t, but they do offer a simple-way to self-host the backend (looks like it’s “just” a matrix server and a bunch of bridges) and then you can use any open-source matrix client to connect to that. Seems like a pretty good balance of a way to make money and the guts being open enough that one could move if the client/company goes side-ways, while contributing a lot to the open-source community.
?
Anyone have any thoughts on the privacy and security aspect of this?
Removed by mod
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
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.
I remember trying to setup matrix bridges using these exact repositories a while ago!
So if this company does the dirty job behind like server management and brings it nicely packaged as product, I’m fine with this. I’m tired of having to install more than 2-3 apps (lots of families abroad) just to communicate.
Would beeper give me access to iMessage without having an iDevice?
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.
Yes! One of the main reasons lots of people use Beeper
Been using their bridges for over 2 years, super happy that I no longer need WhatsApp installed on my phone.
If you’re like me and live in a country where a shitty chat application is required to be able to function in society, software like this is a breath of fresh air. The bridges are also super stable and incredibly well written.
Note: to be clear, I don’t use beeper itself, but use their open source bridges (what beeper is using internally) on my own self hosted Matrix server.
The one thing that sucks about bridging and is never likely to be solved is voice calls through bridges. Theres really no good way to implement it as you would essentially need to have the bridge call you through matrix after you get a WhatsApp call.
Yes, this is very correct.
As a person who’s been using said bridges as his primary form of contact for years, it’s very difficult to tell people: “Hey, I’m not actually reachable on Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram, please just call me instead”.
As a result, I have a backup “net phone” in one of my cupboards with each of those apps installed. If I’m dealing with a particularly stubborn person I have to use it as a fall back.
So, while I love these bridges, your comment is completely valid and anyone thinking of using them should be aware of that.
TLDR, my Matrix chats are filled with:
Person A (WA): Incoming call
Me: I don’t have whatsapp, needs to be a normal call :(
Person A (WA): Ok. Calling in five minutes.
It gets even funnier when the other person can’t even distinguish between a phone call and a whatsapp voice call.
Me: I can’t answer WA calls, I will call you back.
Person: What???
Yeah, as a result I just see matrix + Tulir’s bridges as a system that I’ve deployed just for me.
I get all my chat networks in one place, and others get to see me online on their networks of choice. Not perfect, but not the worst.
And it’s leagues ahead of Trillian and the rest of those older solutions.
There was a bit in the Office about this… 🐶
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?
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).
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.
This is using matrix. You can even connect to it from any matrix client.
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
I don’t care about beeper one way or another, but that bloody image with the post, it needs to die in a fire.
Well universal chat (like universal e-mail) is either going to be a common open protocol (does not seem very likely given Apple and all the other players) or is going to be something like this on the client side. Although its a lot of work, it does seem more possible. The only pity is it can’t solve connecting to services that I don’t use like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp.
The EU is forcing the big chat companies to open their gates. They have until April of next year to comply, so we might see a common protocol for chat pretty soon
This one I hadn’t heard about until now, do you have a link to some more information?
Digital market act https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Chat apps are only part of it. It will force iOS and android to offer competing app market too.
Oh, I hadn’t realized chat apps were covered by it, but that sounds promising! Thanks for the link 🙂
Isn’t Apple restricting their part of that to EU citizens?
Can you explain how this affects chat apps? What do they need to implement?
They need to be interoperable. For example if you’re on Signal but want to chat with your parents who are on FB Messenger, then you would be able to chat to them via Signal.
You can envision each chat apps as different instances and these communicate to eachother with a common protocol, just like ActivityPub in Lemmy.
That sounds like something that companies are going to do literally everything they can to avoid. I hope this makes them squirm.
That is really going to be interesting, yes! It is seriously needed despite what Apple will say. And if implemented correctly it can still be E2EE but with our own client apps.
This post reads like an ad, how is it upvoted so much?
Well known software built using Matrix. A lot of people have been following this project.
Yeah I’m excited about it. Dubious and skeptical, but excited too.
You are asking the right questions, keep digging deeper! Ban all Karma and abolish all mods and admins!
Self-host an instance with no karma and no mods.
“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.
