With a month away from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is getting ready to permit different messaging networks in its app.
In an interview with Wired, Dick Brouwer, an engineering director at WhatsApp, stated that the corporate is able to supply interoperability on the platform with over 2 billion customers.
“There’s actual pressure between providing a straightforward option to supply this interoperability to 3rd events while on the similar time preserving the WhatsApp privateness, safety, and integrity bar. I feel we’re fairly proud of the place we’ve landed,” he instructed the publication.
The EU agreed upon together with messaging interoprability beneath DMA in 2022. This rule mandates gatekeepers like WhatsApp and Messenger to open up their providers to different chat apps.
Meta can be working so as to add help for different chat apps to Messenger. Initially, these experinces will concentrate on one-on-one chats the place individuals can ship textual content, audio, video, pictures, and recordsdata throughout apps. As WABetaInfo reported earlier than, this expertise will reside in a brand new sub-menu on prime of the inbox known as “Third-party chats.”
Brouwer, who labored on rolling out end-to-end encryption for Messenger final yr, instructed Wired that this shall be an opt-in experince to keep away from spam and scams.
“I can select whether or not or not I need to take part in being open to exchanging messages with third events. That is essential, as a result of it could possibly be an enormous supply of spam and scams,” he stated.
Corporations that need to be be interoprable with Meta’s system should signal an settlement, particulars of which aren’t public but. WhatsApp would require end-to-end encryption to allow interoperability. Nevertheless, Apple’s lately introduced adjustments to the App Retailer might function an indicator that the phrases won’t be easy.
Lately, open-source messaging protocol Matrix’s founder Matthew Hodgson famous at a chat that it has labored with WhatsApp on an “experimental” foundation to make the protocol work with end-to-end encryption intact.
It’s not clear if different operators like Telegram, Viber, and Google are planning so as to add interoprability help with WhatsApp.
Brouwer instructed Wired that third-party chats and WhatsApp native chats won’t attain characteristic parity as interoprability might open up new privateness and safety points.
Apps that usher in a number of messaging providers beneath one umbrella has been in highlight for the previous few months. Final October, WordPress.com proprietor Automattic purchased Texts.com for $50 million. Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky’s Beeper has been in dialog for its effort — which Apple shutdown — to deliver iMessage to Android telephones.
