There are a few differences, mainly we don't access your personal[0] messages but provide our a sandbox number that the CLI interacts with - this is completely free to use.
With the sandbox number you can:
- interactively message from the terminal
- read conversations
- send messages, including media, buttons etc
You may upgrade to connect and manage dedicated numbers, these are created and managed through the Official WhatsApp Business API - it's all official so no ban risk on these accounts unless you break Meta's rules.
[0] How can I use my existing number?
- If you're a WhatsApp Business App number - you can connect this with Wassist, we use a primitive called co-existence to link to an WhatsApp Business API account that you'll create. Again 100% official API
- If you're using a WhatsApp consumer number - you need to convert this to WhatsApp business App number (https://faq.whatsapp.com/3059780464322392/?cms_platform=andr...)
The way I would put it as someone who works at Beeper is: only use messaging automations for personal use, and don't use it to spam anyone or do anything you wouldn't do yourself within the app.
As long as you don't abuse and keep your usage within the parameters of any human, you'll be fine.
...until Meta decides they want to offer this kind of thing themselves and ban everyone else. Building your SaaS on top of someone else's SaaS is always a gamble, especially if said product is directly sold to users already and not a pure b2b intermediate.
Since recently Meta offers this as per European Union mandate (Digital Markets Act, DMA). For both Whatsapp and Facebook messaging. [0]
Now there are a lot of implementation requirements, basically forcing you to have some kind of messaging provider. Therefore difficult to apply for an open source solution. However there is such an interface.
I personally find the almost absence of spam on WhatsApp a big success story for it. Think about how much Spam still hits your email inbox (and nobody knows how much is filtered away before it does).
I totally understand why they try and make it hard for integration to happen. When compared to classic SMS, the fact that you need to start a conversation with a preapproved template means that they have a way to control casual interactions.
I consider marketing use to be spam, and this is what the API is primarily meant for.
I understand that WhatsApp is kinda special in that it effectively replaced SMS in some parts of the world, but IMO this needs to be looked at through the lens of other Meta effort. The same is the case with Facebook/Messenger, and has been since before WhatsApp has been a (Meta) thing - they offer multiple different official ways to support spamming users and tricking them to buy stuff, but may the Lord have mercy on you should you want to create an auto-responder or "save to calendar" script and hook it up to your personal account.
That seems a but pessimistic. A few companies use it for customer service, like ime Adidas Germany [0] (they handled an exchange for me once on there). It is effectively just another customer support line like a chat portal on a website.
Exactly, "automate your WhatsApp/Signal/..." sounds like "use XMPP for that use case", that's my go-to for bots and notifications, it works as well if not better, and I sleep better at night.
When banned it'll give you means to reach out to support, you can claim ignorance and get unbanned. I've gone through this, having done some whatsapp automation myself, YMMV though.
Context usage is a client problem - progressive disclosure can be implemented without any spec changes (Claude/code has this built in for example). That being said the examples for creating a client could be massively expanded to show how to do this well
> “Our strongest selling point is that we know who our audience is. All our displays are integrated with cameras so we can get the demographic data and also track the occupant engagement.”
Working in this space, the person running the building barely knows who is living there...
https://x.com/Jaw9c/status/2045074983961973136 :)
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