New EU rules mean WhatsApp and Messenger must be interoperable with other chat apps. Here’s how that will work.

WhatsApp will soon make it possible to chat with people who use other messaging apps. It’s revealed some more details on how that will work.

— Apps will need to sign an agreement with Meta, then connect to its servers.

— Meta wants people to use the Signal Protocol, but also says other encryption protocols can be used if they can meet WhatsApp’s standards

— WhatsApp has been testing with Matrix in recent months, although nothing is agreed yet. Swiss app Threema says it won’t become interoperable

  • @Mechanize@feddit.itEnglish
    57•9 months ago

    “One of the core requirements here, and this is really important, is for users for this to be opt-in,” says Brouwer. “I can choose whether or not I want to participate in being open to exchanging messages with third parties. This is important, because it could be a big source of spam and scams.”

    Let me translate this for you: "We will make users hop on the most cumbersome, frustrating and inefficient way we can think of to enable interoperability. And making it defaulted to off will mean people using other apps will need to find other channels to ask for it to be enabled on our users’ end, making it worthless.

    And don’t forget: we will put a bunch of scary warnings, and only allow to go all in, with no middle ground or granularity!"

    Great stuff, thank you. I can’t wait.

    “We don’t believe interop chats and WhatsApp chats can evolve at the same pace,” he says, claiming it is “harder to evolve an open network” compared to a closed one.

    Ah, so they are going for the Apple’s approach with iMessage and Android sms. Cool, cool.

    I hope my corporate-to-common translator is broken, because this does just sound bad.

    • MudMan
      23•9 months ago

      Yeah, but you do realize all that you’re describing is still more open than “this is a closed app that interops with nobody and also is permanently tied to your phone number”, right?

      I mean, I don’t like the guys and I avoid their services whenever possible, but… man, as an unwilling Whatsapp user the ability to migrate without having to convince all my social circles to do anything but check a checkbox sounds like a huge step forward. I literally surfaced the idea of migrating to the WhatsApp group I thought would be most willing today and got nothing but crickets.

      • @Mechanize@feddit.itEnglish
        10•9 months ago

        as an unwilling Whatsapp user the ability to migrate without having to convince all my social circles to do anything but check a checkbox sounds like a huge step forward.

        That’s the point. I feel it will not be a “simple checkbox”, and they will make it the most obnoxious process they can using the Best Dark Patterns the industry has to offer.

        Already the general public is not interested in the alternatives or the concept of interoperability - wanting something that Just Works™ - putting in front even the smallest step (and some scary text!) will make the percentage of willing people become even lower.
        And that’s not all. As it is portraited in the article by the Threema’s spokeperson it is pretty clear that Meta will just try to make the maintenance of the communication layer as cumbersome as they can - both technically and bureaucratically.
        They are explicitly the ones keeping the reins of the standard, the features, the security model, the exchanged data and who, how and when will be approved.

        So from one side if they make it hard and scary enough to tank the use rate, they will have the excuse of not being there enough people to give priority to fix it or add features, and from the other side if maintaining the interoperability will be difficult and time consuming enough, the people and businesses from the alternatives or wrappers will not have the incentive to do or keep doing it for the long haul. As we can already see in the article.

        Is it better than nothing? Sure, probably. Will it be a slow cooking, easy to break, easy to get excluded from, just bare minimum to comply to the letter but not the spirit of the law? I feel that’s a pretty good bet to make.

        Let’s be clear: I will be extremely happy if all the red flags and warning bells that I saw in the article will just end up being figments of my imagination. But yes, I’m very pessimistic - maybe even too much - when I see these kind of corporate speech and keywords.

        • MudMan
          4•9 months ago

          But what would be the point?

          I swear, people have all these weird conspiracy theories around supposed “EEE” tactics, but Whatsapp already dominates the instant messaging space. It’s pretty much a monopoly. The simplest solution to continue to dominate basically the entire market is do nothing.

          Somebody explain to me how literally having the entire market to themselves in exclusive is somehow worse than any interoperability at all. You can’t tank the use rate lower than zero.

          • @Mechanize@feddit.itEnglish
            8•9 months ago

            I feel there’s some kind of miscommunication going on here.

            Probably I’m not understanding what you are putting forward, but to be clear: They are not doing this because they want to. They are doing it because they are forced to do it by the DMA.
            It’s true that allegedly they were working on some kind of interoperability layer already. For years now. But no evidence of it being more than lip service to avoid being regulated has ever surfaced - as far as I know.

            Which would have been in line with your “Do Nothing”.

            • MudMan
              3•9 months ago

              It’s not lip service if I can send messages and other people can receive them.

              Again, the status quo is you can’t do that. Hell, in the spectrum of being dragged into reasonableness by the EU kicking and screaming, Meta is orders of magnitude below Apple here.

              I mean, we can debate the finer points of the implementation once it’s live, but for now this is nothing but positive movement. If people got over rejecting cookies they can get over dismissing warnings regarding interoperability, and if they don’t, the same regulators have a history of re-spanking unruly malicious compliers.

      • LaggyKarEnglish
        5•9 months ago

        No, they have to convince everyone they talk to to enable the setting to be able to use this

  • xorEnglish
    20•9 months ago

    Yet another EU w

    They’re really just regulating big tech on behalf of the rest of the planet right now

    • Echo DotEnglish
      8•9 months ago

      Repairability, usbc, interoperability of messaging systems.

      All they need to do now is pass a law that prevents a company from developing more than one messaging app at a time and were golden.

  • 2xsaikoEnglish
    9•9 months ago

    I wonder what’ll come first, this or RCS on iOS?

    group chats will come years down the line

    Oh come on. (Though that’s fair enough, since coordinating groups including users from different services is likely a lot harder to get right.)

      • 2xsaikoEnglish
        2•9 months ago

        From what I understand, it’s implemented on mobile carrier level, so any phone or other device with a cellular modem connected to a carrier that supports it should be able to use it (edit: of course, ignoring insufficient access, at the very least rooted Android or some Linux should work). Can’t really find more specific details right now though. Here’s a library and sample client for it though: https://github.com/Hirohumi/rust-rcs-client

        Of course, this is only for clients, it’s true you can’t set up your own server.

  • Echo DotEnglish
    4•9 months ago

    Good the lack of features in Whatsapp is so frustrating.

  • @guyinachair@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4•9 months ago

    I can’t read the full article. I can already get Whatsapp/signal/matrix messages on beeper whats changing for Whatsapp?

    • Greg ClarkeEnglish
      17•9 months ago

      It’ll be end to end encrypted. As far as I’m aware, beeper needs access to messages send cross platform

    • GigglyBobble
      10•9 months ago

      Isn’t the just based on a matrix server connecting to all your accounts?

      What the EU forces them to do is to be able to send messages across service borders, so you could communicate with someone on WhatsApp, for example, without having an account there yourself.

      I do share the most upvoted comment’s skepticism though - Meta and Apple will fight this tooth and nails and make it so cumbersome (and opt-in, of course), it will have no relevance in practice.

      As a Signal user I’m also not happy that the very least I have to share with Meta is my phone number (that’s also criticism towards Signal though, I guess).