The European Union has recently reached an agreement on a significant competition reform known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will impose strict rules on large tech companies that will have to offer users the ability to communicate with each other using different apps. WhatsApp is one of the companies that will be required to comply with the new regulations outlined in the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. This is because WhatsApp is considered a gatekeeper service since it’s a large tech platform with a substantial user base and falls within the criteria set by the DMA. With the latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.19.8 update, which is available on the Google Play Store, we discovered that WhatsApp is working on complying with the new regulations:
As you can see in this screenshot, WhatsApp is working on a new section dedicated to the new regulations. Since it is still in development, this section is still not ready, it appears empty and it’s not accessible to users, but its title confirms to us that they are now working on it. WhatsApp has a 6-month period to align the app with the new European regulations to provide its interoperability service in the European Union. At the moment, it remains unclear whether this feature will also eventually extend to countries beyond the European Union.
Interoperability will allow other people to contact users on WhatsApp even if they don’t have a WhatsApp account. For example, someone from the Signal app could send a message to a WhatsApp user, even without a WhatsApp account. While this broader network can definitely enhance communication with those people who use different messaging apps and assist those small apps in competing within the messaging app industry, we acknowledge that this approach may also raise important considerations about end-to-end encryption when receiving a message from users who don’t use WhatsApp. In this context, as this feature is still in its early stages of development, detailed technical information about this process on WhatsApp as a gatekeeper is currently very limited, but we can confirm that end-to-end encryption will have to be preserved in interoperable messaging systems. In addition, as mentioned in Article 7 of the regulations, it appears that users may have the option to opt out when it will be available in the future.
Third-party chat support is under development and it will be available in a future update of the app. As always, we will share a new article when we have further information regarding this feature.
I do not trust Whatsapp to provide the security of a signal conversation. Who wants signal and WhatsApp to talk to each other ?
People who use WhatsApp but have friends who want to use signal and vice versa.
Your average person really does not care about this stuff,they just want something easy and familiar. This is good for people who care enough to use signal but still want to actually chat to people.
I use Signal and refuse WhatsApp. However, my karate club uses Messenger to communicate, for example if you can’t show up one night.
My shihan asked if I could communicate with him over WhatsApp, which I declined. But I like the idea of being able to text him that I can’t show up, or if there are some changes needed to our website. Things which aren’t exactly sensitive.
It indeed is not a good thing, because Signal might not do shit with your data, but WhatsApp might. Your conversation is mirrored to the WhatsApp user afterall. Though It would be nice if it was an optional and “dangerous” option to enable in the advanced options section. Just like how WhatsApp will allow you to disable interoperability. Because I’d rather use Signal’s app over using WhatsApp if I am not going to succeed in getting others to join Signal at the very least.
I would be surprised if Whatsapp tried to implement its own version of Telegram’s, Signal’s and every other messaging app’s protocol to “talk” to all of these other apps. I bet they will provide an API to interoperate with Whatsapp that these other clients may (or may not) choose to implement, in order to send their messages to Whatsapp users.
In that scenario it would up to Signal (if they implement this) to choose how to display to their users that they are sending a message to someone who’s using Whatsapp, or to create options for users who want to disable this completely.
Me…if I am 100% aware the other end is using whatsapp. Then I know what’s what.