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

  • MudMan@kbin.social
    62·
    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.

    • MechanizeEnglish
      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@kbin.social
        41·
        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.