With a month away from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is making ready to permit different messaging networks in its app.
In an interview with Wired, Dick Brouwer, an engineering director at WhatsApp, mentioned that the corporate is able to provide interoperability on the platform with over 2 billion customers.
“There’s actual stress between providing a straightforward solution to provide this interoperability to 3rd events while on the identical time preserving the WhatsApp privateness, safety, and integrity bar. I believe we’re fairly proud of the place we’ve landed,” he instructed the publication.
The EU agreed upon together with messaging interoprability below 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 give attention to one-on-one chats the place folks can ship textual content, audio, video, photos, and recordsdata throughout apps. As WABetaInfo reported earlier than, this expertise will dwell in a brand new sub-menu on high of the inbox referred to as “Third-party chats.”
Brouwer, who labored on rolling out end-to-end encryption for Messenger final yr, instructed Wired that this will likely 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 necessary, as a result of it might be a giant supply of spam and scams,” he mentioned.
Firms that need to be be interoprable with Meta’s system must signal an settlement, particulars of which aren’t public but. WhatsApp would require end-to-end encryption to allow interoperability. Nonetheless, Apple’s not too long ago introduced modifications 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 herald a number of messaging providers below one umbrella has been in highlight for the previous couple of 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 carry iMessage to Android telephones.
