2y ago

WhatsApp will soon be your one-stop solution for all your chat apps

www.androidpolice.com

SUMMARY

The EU has identified WhatsApp as a gatekeeper in the messaging industry and has given it a few months to enable interoperability with other apps.
The EU's Digital Markets Act aims to promote fair competition and give consumers more options for alternative services.
WhatsApp has already begun working on interoperability with other apps, potentially allowing smaller players like Signal to compete more fairly.

139 comments

Signal will soon be your one stop solution for all your chat apps
Fixed that for you.
- Except SMS
  
  especially SMS
Why is this being presented as "whatsapp will be the one and only" instead of "whatsapp won't be the only option"? The DMA will users to install nearly any chat app and chat with users from another chat app.
- Where are you getting "the one and only" from? Are you misinterpreting "one-stop solution"?
  
  What are you interpreting "one-stop solution" as?
The fact that iMessage got the exemptions underpins the entire act. I would any day switch to Signal, if there is 1:1 interoperability b/w the platforms.
- @TheMadnessKing @floppy in Europe for most people iMessage is just the SMS app. Even though it pisses me off that Apple got away with it, having WhatsApp to comply with this is just huge. Everyone here uses WhatsApp, and now I won't be forced to leave Signal anymore.
- iMessage is not considered a gatekeeper in Europe because pretty much nobody uses it. That's why it's extempted.
- Apple just claimed an exception. It's still up to the EU to determine whether it is actually exempt or not.
  
  I'm sure I read that they got the exemption approved.
- Nobody here uses it though
  
  Yes. Thankfully.
- It's because there's not enough people in the EU actually using it.
- It's really on American regulators to hold American companies accountable if they abuse their dominant position in the American market to the detriment of American consumers.
- They got a exception because npbody uses that insecure garbage here, everyone uses Whatsapp tho so this makes a lot of sense!
No it won't.
My sister was angered when I quit whatsapp (and facebook), asking me reasons why and if it was because I didn't like her. Told her I like my privacy. Haven't heard of her and a lot of other family since who only like to communicate through social media. Good.
I like SMS and Signal, only people that care for me are using that because I asked them to.
- I’m there with you on the ideals, after all here I am on Lemmy (and mastodon fwiw) with Reddit and TwitterX deleted.
  But, everybody I am close to in everyday life is a normie for lack of a better term. I don’t have to use Facebook regularly, for example, but there is a practical value to just having it available and checking notifications from time to time.
  Kind of like how I’m looking through some code in Linux at work today, but it’s running in a VM on my Microsoft/O365 equipped PC. Much like with Facebook, factors outside my control necessitate using it, so I accept it without stressing myself.
  I’m not trying to argue or convince you to change your ways though! FLOSS and privacy need awareness and advocacy, and therefore need strong outspoken supporters!
- only people that care for me are using that because I asked them to.
  That logic works both ways. You don't care about them enough to use WhatsApp/Facebook it seems to me.
- WhatsApp can eat a crap
  I won't use it either
- Not to burst your bubble but SMS is even less secure than WhatsApp. In fact, SMS is among the least secure communication avenues on a phone, since your telecommunications provider has the ability to keep logs of what you send, when you send it and to whom you send it to.
  Not to mention how insecure 4G is and how easy it is to intercept other people's messages
- Chad move
Cool so I can decide to use Signal for privacy reasons and if the other party uses WhatsApp all my chats with them are read by Meta? What is the point?
- No, it's still E2EE. Meta can't read it as far as anyone knows. Meta will know that the other person has you in their contacts (they already know this) and that they are messaging you, that's it.
  
  Meta writes the software that runs on the other end, and it's closed source. Therefore for all we know, the message is end-to-end encrypted, and the moment it is decrypted on the other end Meta can send it back to their servers or use it for advertising. Unless the client at the end is open source and audited, E2E doesn't mean much imo
  
  That's not it. It's E2EE but Meta gathers all the metadata from Whatsapp including who you contact, when, where, how large the messages are, what times you're online and for how long, phone numbers, names etc. That's plenty of info to create a profile on users and their connections with each other, as is Facebook's MO.
- What is the point?
  The point is that you are not using Whatsapp to talk to them. Which is inherently an improvement since they only get one sided metadata.
- The point is that people can switch their apps one by one, not losing any contacts in the way, instead of trying to convience all your friends to install new app at once.
  
  You can install both apps and transition one friend at a time
- Whatsapp encrypts top and it's your choice to write with someone on Whatsapp... 🤦
I can't wait for signal/session/simplex to be whatsapp compatible, but I'm not sure they can provided the e2ee gurantees since whatsapp is closed source.
- At least that's what they said it uses.
- I fear that Signal won't implement cross compatibility for WhatsApp since they already said that they are not a fan of potentially giving up E2EE to get it to work. And I can understand that but I still really would like to have the cross compatibility.
  
  I hope Signal doesn't if it won't be E2EE. I like knowing that if it's in Signal, it's E2EE, and being able to tell less technically sophisticated people to whom I recommend Signal that everything in it is secure against eavesdropping.
  
  Beeper will do it, if you self host, it shouldn't be terrible
- Signal and also lots of other privacy focused messenger-services (threema e.g.) already said the will not implement this forced interoperability since it will lower their already high standards regarding their users privacy. Sad but i guess it makes sense :(
  
  So users of those apps will have to install the even less secure apps to converse with "normies". Great move.
- I’m not sure they can provided the e2ee gurantees since whatsapp is closed source.
  Uh, news flash: Signal and Meta are business partners and WhatsApp (just as Facebook Messenger) uses Signal's encryption:
  https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp/
  https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
  The ability to sell proprietary versions of Signal libraries is literally the reason for Signal's Contributor License Agreement: https://signal.org/cla/
  
  it's still closed source, so we can't make guarantees about WhatsApp conversation participants.
Not a fucking chance!
Signal interoperability
I support it but this doesn't sound legit
Odd way to spell Matrix.
It's weird. With every single app having a DM feature years before Whatsapp was even invented, with every single cell phone having email and SMS capabilities, and with a bunch of E2E encrypted apps already in service, why would I want to go back to Facebook's ecosystem in 2023?
- When every single person you know uses Whatsapp, you have to use it too. That's what this law is about. So you can use other apps even if everyone else uses whatsapp
- Whatsapp worked on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and even some old ass java phones
  They dominated the market in most countries or were close second to Messenger.
  Now they keep growing and it doesn't give any chance to smaller better apps, this law makes it possible for you to use only signal but also chat to people that only use Whatsapp
Eww no get that trash outta here
And this is where I wonder, how long until Matrix servers preemptively defederate from WhatsApp?
- Probably won't. WhatsApp is already huge. Threads was a new platform with artificially inflated user numbers.
- Why though? To avoid users leaving Signal for Whatsapp? if you need to chat with someone through matrix into whatsapp, right now you laready have whatsapp installed. I prefer to talk to whatsapp users from a more secure app, thanks.
Nice try, WhatsApp.
I setup my own matrix instance and ran a few bridges on it, so I don't need WhatsApp thanks
- How does that solve communication with people that are exclusively on whatsapp?
- This is the way
- Bridges?
  
  You can set up bridges to link to your other messengers. Then you will only need Matrix to be able to reply to everyone.
- But you still need an account and the bridge does not use official API.
Does anyone know what level of interoperability is required? Like basic text, pictures, emoji... or every feature including things like location sharing?
- Full Unicode text and images is likely all we'll get, but honestly I never understood the appeal of all the crap they stuff into (say) iMessage.
  
  I don't know iMessage, but some of the more advanced features in WhatsApp/Messenger are great. I use shared location almost daily, voice messages are great too.
- Good question. Because it could end up like the interoperability of MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger of the early 2000's. It was crap.
Fuck that, fuck them they belong in the digital bin. I don't want WhatsApp to be able to connect to Signal or anything else. Sounds like a gigantic security risk.
- Yeah, fuuuuuck that. I use Signal for a reason.
  
  Yeah and I'm kinda liking the "either use signal or leave me the fuck alone" part of it.
- "I don't want these Signal encrypted Matrix protocol messages on my Signal encrypted Matrix protocol messaging app, it's a gigantic security risk"
- WhatsApp and Signal use the same Signal developed protocol for E2EE
  
  And yet one of them is from Facebook and the other one is not...
- This is such a silly take. If you will talk to signal users, you won't interact with this tech. If you want to talk to whatsapp users, right now yo need to have the app which is much worse!
I have a whatsapp because my dad wanted to be able to call me without international long distance fees. He's called once and I get endless amounts of spam. I'll be seeing him in a couple of weeks, and I can hopefully switch him to LINE (what everyone uses here) and get rid of this app for all and get the last cancer of Meta out of my personal life.
- Really? I've gotten almost no spam in the last decade or so I've been using it. The one time I did, I think the account had been hacked.
- WhatsApp is fundamentally bad and anti-consumer because it is proprietary. When people are not allowed to understand, change and redistribute the source code, the people will ALWAYS be milked and abused in some way. Trust me. LINE is also closed source and unfree, so it would only be a matter of time until that company fucks you up and you want to switch to another messenger. The most popular open source/ free messenger would be Signal. Conceptually the most promising one in my opinion is SimpleX Chat, if you want to be a bit more adventurous
  
  No one I know is going to change to those. LINE also has other business stuff built in for interacting with companies (customer service for my massage place, my dentist, etc.) In an ideal world, sure, but it isn't going to happen.
Whoa this is bonkers! Would be great if all apps supported RCS as a fallback
- RCS needs phone operators, it does not have any publicly available server or client implementation and is already obsolete by other Internet based protocols. And noone uses it besides Google that has bad reputation for keeping chat apps alive.
  
  Genuinely interested:
  Made obsolete by what protocols?
wrong
I wonder if WhatsApp is going to make a white list of compatible App or if they just open an API or document a protocol...
Anyway, I found it awesome.
If someone don't want to chat with a WhatsApp user it's always possible too.
Whatsapp? More like whatdafuck
Whatsapp? What year is this? 2015?
edit: get some real problems yall
- WhatsApp is easily the most used chat app outside the US and has never gone away. I live in South America and it's HUGE here, specially since IPhones didn't caught on down here, so we don't use whatever app the US public uses.
  
  Man I wish I could live in the no iPhone world.
  
  The US public largely uses SMS still.
- You never heard about the WhatsApp Empire?
  
  whatsapp is huuuge in India too, literally default messasing and calling app
- @elbhm @floppy you americans are making a fool of yourselves in these threads, there are tons of comments about whatsapp being old or only for drug dealers & sex workers, and it's so funny how out of touch with the world outside of your borders y'all are. In basically any other place of the world; universal messengers like WhatsApp, Telegram, or WeChat are the de facto standard.
I will finally be able to replace fucking SMS with a few people that simply won't switch to Signal, I simply won't use Whatsapp and that did cause some security issues till now!
Doubt it
I can assure you, it won't for me. The only people I ever see using it IRL are meth heads and prostitutes lol
- You run with an interesting crowd.
Do people here know about beeper, i would make it my main but it doesnt support calls and stuff which unfortunately makes it a dealbraker. I hope in the future we will be meta free
- No, 1st time hearing about it. Apparently, it uses a matrix homeherver that uses open source bridges to connect to 15 different chat networks. If it supported calls would be great. Should give it a try regardless later. Anyway, here's the faq for anyone interested: https://www.beeper.com/faq
  On a side note, I was wondering. Can't WhatsApp ban you for using a 3rd party client? I heard that used to be the case before. But, I'm not sure what it's it like today.
  
  I have no idea if they would ban you, i atleast havent heard of that happening. Also just so you know there is is waitlist for signing up and it can take months
- I do, but I'm on a waitlist (and don't want to selfhost) so I've not been able to try it out yet (I don't make calls through WhatsApp, so I see the lack of support as a benefit).
  
  Message me and I'll send you an invite link to skip the waitlist. I think it's a thing I can do on the desktop app now
  
  Oh I see, then it would probably be perfect for you, hope you get the invite soon
- This looks pretty good, signing up for the wait-list.
- I used it a bit, but you need a WhatsApp account to chat with WhatApp user.
  The goal is to have all your account and messages in one App, but you still need one account per Service (whatspapp, telegram, twitter ... ).
  
  Yes of course, but till we have that its a very good workaround
Nope
- It does not. Discord was not recognized as a gatekeeper.
Nostr fixes this.
- Simplex.Chat fixes this.
It already is outside the US
I'll be here waiting to see how they implement it if they ever manage to do it.
In what way will it replace or integrate with Discord?
One stop solution for all chat apps my arse.

139 comments

Signal will soon be your one stop solution for all your chat apps

especially SMS