If you are violating Apple's terms of service, even if they cannot identify each account you create, can they not simply ban you as a legal entity from using their service, and then sue you for damages if you do so anyway?
However if you're hosting your own mac mini farm and running bluebubbles or other such things that are not approved by Apple what is your plan to handle the case where you're sending enough traffic through Apple's services that they disable / ban / block you?
If its the former then awesome but if its the latter then Im not sure I'd want to depend on your service knowing that apple could ban you at any time.
I also notice you answered the question, but not in the way anyone who needs to depend on this service would want to hear. So yeah you're doing the Mac Mini thing.
I'm with landl0rd. This service should not exist, you should feel bad for creating it, and every time I get a spam iMessage I will think about you and curse your name. Hope the money's worth it.
Are you implying you'd be cool with it if it was Apple sanctioned? That's pretty silly.
It’s pretty obvious that they meant that anyone who depended on their service would/should probably run away kicking and screaming if they were looking for a dependable service that will do what they claim to in the long term.
If they were Apple sanctioned, then at least you’d have some reassurance that the service won’t die randomly one day when Apple has had enough, à la Beeper.
But then just ...Um yes? I trust Apple to keep a handle on their iMessage network. Citation: having used iMessage for ~15 years. This would mean things like ensuring that I didn't get spam. Ensuring actual company identity (does anyone remember Messages for Business?) &c. This is pretty obvious and I am trying to understand your comment?
So far what I’ve seen from your service seems to be yet another attempt at blurring the distinction between bots and human interactions, which is generally used for spammy content
Hmm, I wouldn't be so certain about that. Apple can ban you for whatever they like.
To me this screams you haven't talked to Apple. Given how macabre they were towards Beeper Mini, I almost expect the same treatment for Chert.
Nonetheless, best of luck if you can pull it off.
Did they ask you about a bigger market you can move into?
There's no way this foothold will last. You're going to get massacred.
Apple WILL ban you. You're not in some capricious walled garden. You're breaking and entering, and they'll destroy you.
There is nothing of value to build here. You should take the rest of the day off, then tomorrow, pivot entirely.
The folks here are trying to save you n years of hard work and wasted effort. Please listen. You're lucky to have a YC check. Apply it somewhere else, to some other problem. Preferably not in someone else's garden, and especially not in one where they shoot to kill.
If YC didn't fund this particular idea, they funded the team to pursue some earlier idea that the team then pivoted from to try this one.
In any case, the team needs to pivot. This idea is lighting cash (and time) on fire.
More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
I strongly disagree. If I need to chat with a business, an airline for example, why would I want to use SMS instead of iMessage? It’s the same app, but being able to easily send screenshots or photos and know they were received would be a huge improvement.
Why build a startup outside of making money from spamming community (mobsters) when its only annoys almost every human who receives spam calls, voicemails and texts? I mean even the founders and or those closest to them.. Im sure they love all the spam calls, voicemails (most recently being the annoying personal loan b.s.) and texts... right?
Im sure there's money to be made with spam outfits (mobsters) and more shaddy folks but again this isn't helping the issue that bugs almost every cellphone user out there. The government now is working on trying to fix this issue further, I bet there's more money there to be made in help fixing the issue then exborate it!
> I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale.
This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.
This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse.
They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered.
You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.
iMessage fully supports RCS.
I don’t need more iMessage spam.
what you encourage and what actually happens are two different things, though. gmail does not actively encourage spam, yet most spam emails i receive are from gmail addresses.
you have to actively fight against malicious uses, like spam. "not encouraging" is nowhere near enough.
what systems/processes/safeguards do you have in place to prevent abuse?
"right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale.
do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?
They won't be able to say no to the money.
Commingling things like cart abandonment and (actual, user-initiated) conversational messaging dramatically increases the risk that Apple takes action, from my point of view.
https://blooio.com/ https://www.sendblue.com/ https://www.lindy.ai/ etc?
I will say I am the exact opposite of your market, I want absolutely nothing like this. In fact I'd prefer iMessage to allow ZERO programmatic interfacing.
RCS fallbacks, Emoji reactions, typing indicators, even changing chat background
Would you mind detailing your reasoning why agents should feel humans, when they very obviously aren’t? Why should we want AI to impersonate humans?
What we mean is that conversation should feel natural and low-friction for the person receiving it. These interactions: blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions will make it less like an automated SMS message and more like a normal messaging flow.
We are trying to make agentic communication clear, useful, and native to channels people already use!
How do you ban bad actors so they can't spam again?
Does a user have to initiate contact in order to have messages sent to them?
You should have answers for those points if you want to build trust with end users
Also, while we can't see the exact messages that our customers are sending due to encryption on our servers, we do know when a phone line is close to being banned from our health checks. When that happens, we'll reach out to our customers asap and learn more about what is going on.
I don't get the distinction you're making. I'm not an expert in mobile messaging so maybe I am missing something obvious.
And what about WhatsApp?
My iMessages are for conversations with people that I actually want to talk to. The notifications are high priority because it’s with people that I want to talk to.
I can’t imagine my annoyance if I were to receive an iMessage notification while I’m expecting an important message, only to find that it’s more spam.
My email inbox is already a wasteland because of this. The absolute last thing I need or want is for the same thing to happen to iMessage.
edit: more research
> Chert is in the Sendblue/Blooio lineage, which runs genuine Apple software on real Macs logged into real Apple IDs. They're almost certainly not doing "Beeper Plus again."
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/
Seems pretty damn clear.
I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.