Progressive advocacy groups call on DOJ, Senate to launch investigations over Apple’s blocking of Beeper Mini

More than a dozen organizations called on the Department of Justice and the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Apple for anticompetitive behavior in how it controls messaging, apps, and other imagined slights.
A few days after the Beeper Mini app launched a way for users to send blue-bubble iMessages directly from their Android iPhone knockoffs, Apple shut down the app’s access to its iMessage messaging service, citing security risks.
Lauren Goode for Wired:
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The letter says that Apple’s recent blocking of Beeper, which reverse engineered iMessage to allow compatibility with Android phones, is another example of Apple “abusing its power to stifle competition and protect its famed ‘walled garden.’” It was sent by the Tech Oversight Project, which campaigns for tougher tech regulation.
A second letter was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday by Demand Progress, which works on internet-related civil liberties, asking it to launch its own Apple probe. More than a dozen other progressive advocacy groups cosigned the two letters, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Economic Liberties Project, and Fight for the Future.
In its own letter, Demand Progress, which claims more than a million members, appealed to Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Amy Klobuchar, chair of that group’s subcommittee on antitrust, to call for a public hearing and investigation into Apple’s practices, including its strategy of keeping iMessage exclusive to its own devices.
“Apple is attempting to squash efforts to streamline messaging between Apple and Android devices,” the letter reads. It cites accusations that by making messages from people without iPhones appear in green bubbles, Apple exploits peer pressure, especially on teenagers, to advance its own interests.

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MacDailyNews Take: Yawn. More abject stupidity. There is some poetic justice in here somewhere, however, with Apple being constantly pestered by mindless gnats that they helped raise and feed.
Apple’s iMessage is a secure end-to-end encrypted messaging service for users of Apple devices.
If someone builds an app that manages to access, say, Chase bank accounts, because they want a custom interface, should Chase be hounded by groups of Karens demanding investigations by grandstanding politicians when they quickly close up the security hole that enabled the hack and require that Chase bank accounts can only be accessed via the official Chase app?
Apple built, maintains, and owns the iMessage instant messaging service for users of Apple devices. If you want to use Apple’s iMessage instant messaging service, get real Apple devices capable of running Apple’s Messages app, not half-assed insecure knockoffs peddled to the cheap and/or ignorant by South Korean dishwasher makers and worse. – MacDailyNews, December 11, 2023
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