[HN Gopher] SignalBotOne - Notification Webhooks for Signal
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       SignalBotOne - Notification Webhooks for Signal
        
       Author : danslo
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2025-03-28 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (signalbot.one)
 (TXT) w3m dump (signalbot.one)
        
       | ranger_danger wrote:
       | Doesn't appear to be open source... absolutely not.
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | Does it matter? It's a SaaS anyways, so if they wanted to go
         | rogue and use it to eavesdrop on your chats open source
         | wouldn't really prevent that. They even specifically recommend
         | using a dedicated group chat for notification purposes. For
         | self-hosted deployments there's already a multitude of projects
         | that expose an API to send signal messages.
        
           | aftbit wrote:
           | Yes - if it were open-source, you could self host it.
        
             | zikduruqe wrote:
             | Here ya go. I use this for various notifications for my
             | home network, versus using email.
             | 
             | https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api
        
               | npodbielski wrote:
               | Seems interesting but I have already second app linked to
               | my profile.
        
               | ranger_danger wrote:
               | https://ntfy.sh
               | 
               | https://github.com/caronc/apprise
        
       | mig39 wrote:
       | "Houti Alert" is a hilarious sample notification.
        
         | mikepurvis wrote:
         | Combined with the demo phone being at zero battery, I'm getting
         | a lot of "early April Fools" energy off of this one.
        
       | cuu508 wrote:
       | My SaaS is sending monitoring notifications using signal-cli, and
       | I regularly run into rate limits (enforced by Signal servers, not
       | signal-cli), especially when sending to new numbers/usernames.
       | 
       | To the author--do you have any plans on how to work around that?
        
         | inetknght wrote:
         | Why should the author work around Signal's rate limiting? Are
         | you asking the author to enable spamming?
        
           | DaSHacka wrote:
           | GP is presumably asking what their plans are once the service
           | gets popular, runs into the ratelinit, and cannot send any
           | notifications at all (or with significant delays) to the
           | clients.
        
             | gwillem wrote:
             | Messaging is internally rate limited and capped per
             | recipient. And it uses a sender pool.
        
               | cuu508 wrote:
               | I use per-recipient internal rate limiting too, that
               | alone is not enough, especially for new numbers. I'm not
               | using a sender pool though.
        
       | throwaway-blaze wrote:
       | Maybe I'm just dense but is there a sample curl somewhere for how
       | to send something to the API URL I just got in my signal chat
       | with BotMaster.1000?
        
         | eddythompson80 wrote:
         | The curl command on the homepage?
         | 
         | curl -d 'something' <your url>
        
           | gwillem wrote:
           | The URL that botmaster gave you is a page that lists your API
           | endpoints (multiple if you have invited the bot to any group
           | chats)
        
       | ryanisnan wrote:
       | Cease and desist from Signal incoming, from their legal terms:
       | 
       | > "Signal", Signal logos, and other trademarks are trademarks or
       | registered trademarks of Signal Technology Foundation in the
       | United States and other countries (more info here).
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
         | To be fair, if you own a trademark, in practical terms you
         | _have_ to defend it, or you can lose its protection, or worse,
         | be found liable for civil or even criminal damages.
         | 
         | Some cases where exactly this has happened:
         | 
         | Baldwin Park Med. Ctr. v. Baldwin Park Surgical Ctr.: In 2006,
         | the court ruled that the Baldwin Park Medical Center failed to
         | enforce its trademark rights, allowing a competing medical
         | center to use a similar name and logo. The court held the
         | medical center liable for damages and attorney's fees, stating
         | that the lack of enforcement was "culpable" and "egregious".
         | 
         | Tobacco Plus Discount Corp. v. Tobaccopedia: In 2007, the court
         | ruled that Tobacco Plus Discount Corporation failed to enforce
         | its trademark rights, allowing a competitor to use a similar
         | name and logo. The court held the company liable for damages
         | and attorney's fees, stating that the lack of enforcement was
         | "willful" and "reckless".
         | 
         | Fisher-Price, Inc. v. Quest Brands, LLC: In 2013, the court
         | ruled that Fisher-Price, Inc. failed to enforce its trademark
         | rights, allowing a competitor to use a similar name and logo.
         | The court held the company liable for damages and attorney's
         | fees, stating that the lack of enforcement was "negligent" and
         | "culpable".
         | 
         | Kraft Foods Global Brands ULC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC:
         | In 2015, the court ruled that Kraft Foods Global Brands ULC
         | failed to enforce its trademark rights, allowing a competitor
         | to use a similar name and logo. The court held the company
         | liable for damages and attorney's fees, stating that the lack
         | of enforcement was "negligent" and "culpable".
         | 
         | Lacoste v. Lacoste Footwear, Inc.: In 2018, the court ruled
         | that Lacoste failed to enforce its trademark rights, allowing a
         | competitor to use a similar name and logo. The court held the
         | company liable for damages and attorney's fees, stating that
         | the lack of enforcement was "willful" and "reckless".
        
           | mmooss wrote:
           | What damages are the courts referring to?
        
             | eddythompson80 wrote:
             | I couldn't really find any details about any of these
             | cases. Some of the names there too are pretty strange like
             | "Tobaccopedia" and "Kraft LLC vs Kraft ULC". ULCs (as far
             | as I know) are a Canadian thing and I highly doubt I can
             | just go an open a company called "Cocacola ULC" in Canada?
             | 
             | Those examples look like LLM generated nonsense, though
             | correct me if I'm wrong.
             | 
             | The example usually taught in school for this sort of thing
             | is the trademark for Aspirin. Aspirin is a Bayer brand name
             | for acetylsalicylic acid, but Bayer didn't defend its
             | trademark in most of the world. In most countries
             | (including the US) courts ruled that Aspirin is a generic
             | term and anybody could use it. That's not the case for say
             | Tylenol (acetaminophen) or Advil (ibuprofen) for example.
        
             | tialaramex wrote:
             | You're looking at AI slop because somebody made something
             | up and had the machine riff along with it. You can very
             | well have the LLM generate you a bunch of cases "proving"
             | that it's illegal to have a pet cat or that in France
             | everybody is legally required to smoke.
             | 
             | In fact trademark lawyers would prefer you to believe that
             | if you're spending $1 on like, making the trademarked
             | product rather than giving _them_ the dollar to  "defend"
             | your trademark that's a false economy because magically a
             | court will tear up your trademark because you were supposed
             | to spend all that money on lawyers. If they can argue they
             | really believed this was true (e.g. they read nonsense
             | hallucinated into existence by AI) they're not even lying
             | to you, it's just super convenient that they falsely
             | believed something which directly benefited them...
        
       | npodbielski wrote:
       | Seems interesting but it looks like some cli with web server
       | running on someone else's machine, so basically no security, no
       | encryption. Also probably this bot have an access to your entire
       | chat history.
        
         | gwillem wrote:
         | The bot has access to any sent messages to yourself, plus any
         | chatter in group chats if you have enabled that. So don't use
         | it for sensitive stuff, and use a dedicated group. It was
         | developed to relay sensor data and such, not war plans.
        
       | andrewinardeer wrote:
       | Not working for me. Even with a Houthi alert.
        
         | gwillem wrote:
         | Contact me via the support link?
        
           | karparov wrote:
           | You built this? Would you like to comment what your future
           | plans are?
           | 
           | Your self-description is "entrepreneur love for automation".
           | Is it fair to assume that if this takes off then you are
           | planning to introduce paid plans (perhaps with some revenue
           | sharing with the signal folks to lift rate limits for you)?
        
             | gwillem wrote:
             | I built this for fun and my own notifications. I don't
             | think there's much commercial value here since there's zero
             | moat. But it would be nice if we could raise funds for
             | Signal.
        
       | 0x073 wrote:
       | Doesn't signal ban third party clients?
       | 
       | Personal i wouldn't rely on those notifications and just stick
       | with good working notification services.
        
       | karparov wrote:
       | Who is behind this and how does it work?
       | 
       | Why is this information not present on the front page?
       | 
       | And why does somebody who thinks people would start using and
       | relying on it not immediately understand that that's important
       | information?
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | pretty clear to me.
         | 
         | >Who is behind this
         | 
         | SignalBot - built by gwillem (c) 2025
         | 
         | contact (link to a signal group)
         | 
         | >and how does it work?
         | 
         | "Receive messages on Signal via a simple API. Perfect for
         | notifications and alerts."
         | 
         | "curl -d ' Houthi alert' https://signalbot.one/api/..."
         | 
         | If you don't know what "API" or "webhooks" are, then you're
         | probably not the target audience. That's fine. Your aunt
         | probably doesn't know what an "enterprise workload engine"[1]
         | is, but that doesn't mean vmware needs to provide a dumbed down
         | description so everyone can understand.
         | 
         | https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vsphere
        
       | theshrike79 wrote:
       | Still waiting for a native bot API for Signal before I can fully
       | start using it :/
        
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       (page generated 2025-03-28 23:00 UTC)