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.
Signal will soon be your one stop solution for all your chat apps
Fixed that for you.
* Except SMS
especially SMS
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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.
Here people use it as a better SMS. Group chats are all on Discord for my generation and the older generations primarily use FB messenger I believe.
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!
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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
Chad move
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Sad chad
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
Well, I think you’re the only one who thinks that E2EE doesn’t mean much.
No I think you’ve missed their point. E2EE is end-to-end encryption, as in the message can’t be intercepted in the middle but it’s unencrypted at the end so you can read it. Because the WhatsApp app is closed-source you don’t know that it doesn’t immediately read the message and send the content to Facebook. It probably doesn’t, but it could! E2EE itself means that some third party can’t read your message in transit, though to be fair closed-source again means we just have to trust Facebook when they say WhatsApp uses E2EE.
So, this isn’t quite as valid a fear as you seem to think. There will be a lot of very smart people analyzing the shit out of what the app appears to be sending to Facebook servers. True it’s closed source but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to catch them doing fucked up shit. How do you think we currently know about things they do like this? Do you think Facebook told security experts just to be nice? Or do you think the experts figured this shit out on their own?
Sure, good point. But you do agree that it’s harder to trust something that explicitly hides from you what it is doing?
Oh I agree they’ll do every bad thing they can get away with. I just think they wouldn’t get away with decrypting the message and sending it straight to FB
I did get their point and what I’m saying is that back doors like this are discussed all the time and as of now, there’s no proof that they exist. To the contrary, we have information confirming that content of E2E encrypted messages is not available to government agencies. Claiming otherwise without proof is simply spreading disinformation.
If somebody hands me a black box, tells me what’s inside, how is the burden of proof on me? I have to trust them blindly until somebody proves that there is something bad in the black box? No, I ask for a transparent box in the first place.
WhatsApp being a black box means we don’t know how it’s doing things but we can still know a lot about what it’s doing and what it’s not doing. For example we know it has permissions to access all the contacts and we know when it’s accessing device location data. We also know from FBI documents that they can’t access content of E2EE messages or how much data it’s transmitting and when. It would be hard for Meta to transmit all received messages to their servers without anyone noticing. It’s good you prefer OSS but it doesn’t mean you can make wild claims about some security flaws like that.
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.
That’s exactly what I said. They will have meta data but will not be able to read chats. What are you disagreeing with?
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.
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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:
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.
so we can’t make guarantees about WhatsApp conversation participants.
“We” can’t but Signal, who work on WhatApp’s source code, can: https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/
tldr: When contacts have verified each other, communication is secure.
If you think that Signal can’t be trusted, you should not use their client either.
signal may have given a fully vetted and correct implementation to whatsapp, but because its closed source we don’t know if it has changed, or if its really implemented on all conversations.
It changes the trust model of conversation participants.
To answer your query, if signal was closed source, I wouldn’t trust it either.
signal may have given a fully vetted and correct implementation to whatsapp
They were not “given” it. They are literally the contractor who worked on that: “Over the past year, we’ve been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients.” –https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
but because its closed source we don’t know if it has changed, or if its really implemented on all conversations.
I’m not an encryption developer. I can’t vet this for Signal’s own app either.
…and because its closed source, community cryptography developers and researchers can’t vet it for you either. That is the core issue, its not about trust.
It’s about capabilities that inform the threat model, and the exposure model.
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Please keep it civil.
Copy that, ghost rider. That’s my bad.
You could be right for all I know, but only assholes begin their statements by saying “news flash”.
The self-proclaimed rapist is really one to judge…
I assume it’s a reference to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
I assume it’s a reference to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
So he calls himself a rapist and others “assholes” just for fun? Phew, I’m so relieved. I really thought he violated rule 9 (No offensive or unhelpful content) just for a second…
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Ever heard of TV?
Signal interoperability
I support it but this doesn’t sound legit
Not a fucking chance!
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.
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?
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I never used matrix or bridges so I don’t know what that means. Do you still need a whatsapp account? What do people using whatsapp see when you send messages to them? How does encryption work if you bridge something like signal, if there are “bridges” for other apps out there? Can i bridge viber on my phone and avoid the annoying ads that way, how reliable is it?
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You login to your account with the bridge, so the bridge can pretend to be you.
I’ve been reading a bit about it, it sounds good in theory but I’m not sure most people are willing to selfhost (since otherwise you’re just trusting another party with your data anyway) and maintain all these bridges for something as crucial as day to day communication that should be stable. It kinda wraps it all in a single point of failure as well.
Still seems like the EU legislation could be a better option, if I can just interface with everything through signal or telegram.
Matrix is FOSS, Synapse (Matrix server) is FOSS, bridges are FOSS. The only thing stopping most people is a server that can run 24/7
This is the way
But you still need an account and the bridge does not use official API.
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.
How
Nice try, WhatsApp.
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”
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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…
And more critically one is open source so you can verify that it does what they say it does and the other one does not!
Exactly.
Would be awesome if EU demanded that they made at least the message handling part open source.
It doesn’t matter if some part of system is open source. What matters is that there is some nonlibre part.
Well, that’s correct. Apologies.
I don’t know if there’s any precedence anywhere for forcing code to be open sourced, but it’s a nice dream!
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!
