WhatsApp will become interoperable with other messaging apps in Europe

https://tuta.com/blog/whatsapp-interoperable-in-europe

by marvinborner • 8 months ago

102 88 8 months ago

timpera• 8 months ago

This is a really cool initative, but I'm a bit worried about spam.

jkaplowitz• 8 months ago

Being opt-in for the WhatsApp user reduces the severity of that problem a lot, though certainly not to zero for those who do opt in.

ale42• 8 months ago

TBH it also reduces the usefulness of the features a lot. If I first have to contact people on another channel to tell them to enable this feature because I want to message them, well, I guess most people wont just do it.

pndy• 8 months ago

I'm more worried this happens because meta wants to access other networks to train their algorithms for free - just like with fediverse integration on threads.

Of course, this is still only an unfounded guess but I can't believe they're doing this selflessly, out of the goodness of their hearts.

benoau• 8 months ago

I like this, a long time ago there were quite a few multi-service messaging clients that tied into AIM, MSN, Yahoo etc it was very convenient.

The downside is only the "gatekeepers" have to provide this interoperability, when it would be far more useful if all the popular platforms were facilitating it.

sunaookami3• 8 months ago

Yeah this only cements WhatsApp's monopoly because everyone has to implement WhatsApp's proprietary protocol.

Gualdrapo• 8 months ago

Still it's a bit less worse than the current situation where you're forced to use the upstream app because "security" or whatever.

Still I agree that pre-2012 IM status was much better when open protocols were more popular. Of course there was the Windows Live Messenger thing but even you could use something like Pidgin to chat with it.

ForHackernews• 8 months ago

But if there are multiple independent clients and a reverse-engineered protocol, then it should be possible for someone to develop a third-party server implementation.

whizzter• 8 months ago

iirc WhatsApp uses the same protocol as Signal.

smt882• 8 months ago

Meta is only rolling this out in Europe. This does nothing to shake their alarming monopolies in places like India.

moralestapia3• 8 months ago

I see no reason why none of all those extremely talented developers that America desperately needs can't come up with a messaging service of their own.

_dky• 8 months ago

I guess it is more about captured user base than the technology.

What other differentiating factors can you implement that can steer the masses from one messaging platform to the other. I cannot think of any.

j_maffe3• 8 months ago

They can and they have. It's the lock-in Meta is imposing that's preventing new options to succeed in the market.

Vespasian• 8 months ago

Well the Indian government can consider a law similar to the EU Digital Market Acts that enforces such behaviour.

qubex2• 8 months ago

For the iOS world, ideally the Messages app would be mandated to become a generic interface receptive to protocol plug-ins to interoperate with all messaging networks; and it too itself would be replaceable in that role.

isodev• 8 months ago

I'm not sure Apple can be a good steward of such an open, plug-in based solution - they would always put in some restrictions to make the process very complicated and not accessible to platforms and developers.

At the same time, making it possible to choose WhatsApp for the default messaging app has been a great relief for those not locked into Messages.

qubex2• 8 months ago

Well the thing is: if they were particularly obnoxious about their implementation, they could be replaced. I’m looking forward to a multi-protocol messaging client that implements other protocols as plugins. If and when such a thing arrives, I’m setting it to be my default.

jandrewrogers• 8 months ago

A complication is that iMessage supports a ton of collaboration features that don't (and largely can't) exist across other messaging apps. The messaging bits will have the same nerfed interface as SMS/RCS because of missing capabilities.

Despite having the appearance of a messaging app, iMessage operates as a backbone for a lot of OS capability that is surprisingly deep.

Ajedi32• 8 months ago

That seems like a good idea in the sense that it's better than separate apps for everything, but it's also probably the wrong level of abstraction. For example: what happens if you try to create a group chat containing an RCS user, a WhatsApp user, and a Telegram user? Ideally it would just work, but I don't see how that's possible without support for such a thing at a deeper level than just the UI layer.

progval2• 8 months ago

Matrix/Element wrote more on the issue than what is referenced in the article: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/09/whatsapp-dma/

pogue3• 8 months ago

That's from 2024. Has there been any recent updates?

progval2• 8 months ago

None, as far as I know. But it doesn't seem like Meta's stance changed either.

sva_• 8 months ago

I wonder how this will work with e2e encryption?

input_sh• 8 months ago

BirdyChat and Haiket are the first two messaging apps that will initially be interoperable with WhatsApp.

What the heck are BirdyChat and Haiket? Both of those don't seem to actually exist, they just have a waitlist on their homepage.

Literally the only post on BirdyChat's blog is how they're now WhatsApp-compatible, but their initial Google Play release happened 45 days ago (Oct 16th).

Haiket's website similarly contains only one press release, which is to say that they're accepting waitlists since Nov 11th, but they're somehow funded by the "former CEO of AT&T Communications and board member of Palo Alto Networks and Lockheed Martin".

pogue3• 8 months ago

I was curious too, but I figured I was just an out of touch millennial who didn't know what all the kids were chatting on these days and didn't want to say anything...

urbandw311er• 8 months ago

This smells unbelievably dodgy

bfkwlfkjf2• 8 months ago

Facebook will attempt malicious compliance. They will try every trick so that they follow the letter of the law, but still undermine the regulators goals. I think this is round 1: Facebook figured out a way that only two irrelevant apps are initially interoperable.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2• 8 months ago

I dislike fb a fair bit, but if whatsapp effectively replicated functionality of pidgin, I would seriously consider it despite its otherwise evil behavior. If they made it open source with permissible license, I might even forgive some of fb's past transgressions. They do have the resources to pull it off.

Natfan• 8 months ago

not sure i can ever forgive them for, and i quote, "playing a determining role" in a genocide

prmph• 8 months ago

What would be far more useful is easy export/import functionality not tied to iOS/Android backups. i lose some messages every time I switch phones; it's a mess

poisonborz• 8 months ago

Android: You can get the message db with root. You can export individual chats in text version right from the interface. The message media is stored in the user folders.

Still bad, sure, but there are worse offenders.

pogue3• 8 months ago

I'm sick of having so many different messaging apps. Everyone is using a different one, so you have to download another app, signup for something, figure out how to configure it & etc etc.

We need a modern Trillian or Pidgin that just connects to and talks to everything. To be fair, Pidgin still has lots of plugins for many different chat protocols. I don't know how well maintained they are and if they work consistently.

https://pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=Protoco...

lupire• 8 months ago

Ctrl-F XMPP

Hmm.

Remember when gTalk had XMPP and Facebook killed XMPP by refusing to support it and launching the chat silo wars?

alex_duf• 8 months ago

I wonder if that would allow Signal to become interoperable with Whatsapp?

lenerdenator• 8 months ago

I wouldn't want any cross-talk between my secure messaging app and anything that is owned by Meta.

Your comms are only as secure as the node receiving them.

j_maffe3• 8 months ago

Yes which is fine given that you get to choose what you send to which app.

djl0• 8 months ago

FTA: As reported by Heise Online, Signal and Threema will not establish connections allowing for interoperability with WhatsApp.

brettermeier• 8 months ago

I want to read this in original language, but this website always directs me to it's german version.

Really annoying! Respect my decision as a user to choose the language I want, not where my IP comes from...

fer• 8 months ago

It's been a pain point for me for years with many services.

Shameless plug on the topic: https://www.fer.xyz/2021/04/i18n

rrr_oh_man• 8 months ago

Completely and utterly ignored by Google >:(

hmokiguess3• 8 months ago

If I stopped and looked at how many redundant apps I have right now that’d be wild. For messaging alone, I’m on iMessage, Messenger, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, IRC, many in-app DM secondary tier feature chats, and perhaps a few other esoteric ones. Can we go back to just IRC please, those were the days for me.

Yokolos• 8 months ago

I miss the days when I could start Pidgin and it'd automatically log into every single service I use, and I could chat with anybody regardless of which service they were on. I didn't need half a dozen different apps running just to chat. It felt like a utopia compared to what we have today.

rw_grim• 8 months ago

We're working hard on getting back to that, but it takes time, and we're an unfunded open source project, but soon maybe?

You may be interested in our monthly updates https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird

theknarf• 8 months ago

People tried to standardize on XMPP back in the day, but capitalism figured out that standardize didn't fit their profit motivation. These days XMPP is a bit of an dated XML-heavy protocol, but Matrix is a newer alternative, and it supports bridging.

arthurfirst2• 8 months ago

No profit in allowing people to communicate freely without intermediaries.

How to middle man and gatekeep otherwise?

jjav• 8 months ago

This is why we must have open interoperable standards, like the Internet used to and was meant to be.

baiwl• 8 months ago

I also have many messaging apps, but they are all different personas of myself, intended for different audiences. I have zero interest in mixing them.

hmokiguess3• 8 months ago

That could still be part of the protocol though, that's the beauty of protocols versus SaaS. Everyone wins, not just the gatekeepers.

hshdhdhj44442• 8 months ago

In the 90s and early 2000s, my MSN (personal chats with people I knew IRL), Yahoo Chat (chats with people I met in Yahoo Games), ICQ (strangers all over the world) all were different personas and server different purposes.

And yet using those different chat services would have been unimaginable if it wasn’t for Trillian and then later Adium when I moved to a Mac.

Combining them into a single app with a singular UI, the same KB shortcuts, and being able to easily control notifications etc was a game changer.

bfkwlfkjf2• 8 months ago

It's called XMPP now. Think IRC plus E2E encryption for private chats, audio, and video calls.

ExoticPearTree• 8 months ago

And what about E2E encryption? How will that work for users? Or will WhatsApp go the iMessage way and signal that you're talking to a non user of the platform and that you should be careful what you say there?

anonymars• 8 months ago

WhatsApp is the only chat app I've encountered that refuses to work* if you don't give it access to your contacts. The last thing I want is to give it access to even more chats. Go eat a bag of dicks, Meta. More like "metastatic"

* you can respond to messages but are very limited in what you can initiate (as such they got you as part of someone else's contact list)

gear54rus• 8 months ago

Perhaps you'd be interested in learning that you can initiate chats to phone numbers (regardless of contact status) by going to wa.me/<phone-number>

I've never tested it without contacts permissions though.

throw-the-towel• 8 months ago

They broke that just several weeks ago, at least for me.

wodenokoto• 8 months ago

You can send the phone number to yourself in chat and then click it to open it for chat.

sethops1• 8 months ago

I think this might only be true on Android? Apple has a strict policy that the basic app functionality must work even without permissions. And testing right now, I can send messages to direct numbers without having given access to my contacts.

ckemere• 8 months ago

Original poster explained that the functionality is having a contact list. WhatsApp will either access and use ALL your contacts or none on iPhone as well as android. Having jumped through many hoops to preserve conversations without leaking contacts, I’m highly attuned to this…

thisislife22• 8 months ago

Apple has a strict policy that the basic app functionality must work even without permissions.

Is this true? How does Apple enforce this? I ask because WhatsApp initially worked fine on an iPhone, without any access to the contact list, but after a few upgrades, it demanded access to the Contacts list to send messages to new numbers, and did not allow you to do so by typing a phone number directly.

throwaway2903• 8 months ago

Works on iphone though.

sparkie• 8 months ago

This is why you should use Graphene's contact scopes and only allow access to contacts that you want to contact on WhatsApp.

JumpCrisscross• 8 months ago

WhatsApp is the only chat app I've encountered that refuses to work if you don't give it access to your contacts*

I've never given it access to my contacts. (iOS.) It's worked fine. I recently started giving it access to a limited set of my contacts, but that was for convenience.

onemoresoop• 8 months ago

Add Zuck's contact to the group and share that one only.

ThePowerOfFuet• 8 months ago

Telegram did this for me when I tested it years ago. Instantly uninstalled.

dvngnt_• 8 months ago

on android telegram is optional, whatsapp is required

sureglymop• 8 months ago

I don't have this issue at all, I just selectively only give it access to some contacts.

It seems to no longer even scan the contacts by itself, only when you hit "New Chat", press the triple dots and then "Refresh".

Still a pretty garbage app but at least in terms of this it seems to have actually improved.

zenoprax2• 8 months ago

This feels like a distraction from what is really needed: a return to open standards/protocols.

I love the idea of Matrix but the complexity of key management and federation for the average person is far too high. Signal is a perfect direct replacement for WhatsApp but it still requires a phone number.

RCS is good enough... as a fallback protocol. I don't want a dependency on a phone number or a single physical device.

Why is email so durable but federated messaging so fragile? If we can make PGP/GPG email more accessible I wonder if that could translate to instant messaging?

mrguyorama• 8 months ago

The only possible way to return to open standards and protocols would be to make a closed protocol illegal.

That was vaguely the state of things before the DMCA here in the US. Sega had no legal ability to stop other companies from selling cartridges that played on a genesis for example, and in one court case the Judge ruled that the company was legally right to breach Sega's trademark rights to achieve that interoperability. Sony, Nintendo, and others all lost similar suits about trying to restrict interoperability with their products and software.

In fact, Sega was going to lose that case so badly, and the precedent was so clearly beneficial to the consumer and market, that they chose to settle it to prevent the precedent from being established. That this is something you can choose to do well after it becomes obvious how the case should end is an atrocious feature of the US "justice" system. You shouldn't get to take a case all the way to a verdict, and then have an appeals court poke holes in your claims and then say "actually we don't want any of this on the record anymore"

The DMCA as written makes it very easy to prevent interoperability by law simply with a bit of code here or there to make token efforts to prevent access.

niyumard• 8 months ago

If we can make PGP/GPG email more accessible I wonder if that could translate to instant messaging?

You might be amazed...

https://delta.chat

zenoprax2• 8 months ago

Another messaging app to try and convince my friend to try with me! Perfect haha, thanks.

daft_pink• 8 months ago

I generally wouldn’t want my messages going to WhatsApp/Meta/Facebook, but I’m not from a country where usage of those apps is very high at all.

pedrozieg• 8 months ago

What WhatsApp really needs to do is allow people to store their chats in the cloud. WhatsApp is the only communication tool that forces people to keep everything on their phones - or delete information. This causes WhatsApp to take up a large chunk of the available space on most phones.

Tryk• 8 months ago

No thanks, I wouldn't want my text messages used to train an AI. Or my metadata used to improve surveillance.

pmig• 8 months ago

I am still waiting for the day where gMessage (currently called "Messages, Hangouts, or who knows what) & iMessage will be interoperable. The RCS standard is already out there

WhatsApp will become interoperable with other messaging apps in Europe

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