WhatsApp, like many different main know-how platforms, should make some vital modifications to adjust to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). A type of modifications is interoperability with different messaging platforms, explains WhatsApp director of engineering Dick Brouwer in an interview wired.
The transfer to interoperability will first embrace textual content messages, photographs, voice messages, movies and recordsdata despatched from one individual to a different. In idea, this may enable customers to talk with folks on WhatsApp by way of third-party apps like iMessage, Telegram, Google Messages and Sign, and vice versa.
All of it depends upon whether or not different firms get on board, although, as there are nonetheless considerations about how the Meta-owned app will hold messages safe and encrypted when it begins incorporating different providers.
As he notes wired, WhatsApp desires the messaging providers it connects to to make use of the identical sign protocol to encrypt messages. Meta can be open to apps that use different encryption protocols, so long as firms can exhibit that they “meet the safety requirements that WhatsApp outlines in its steering.” Third-party providers may also must signal a contract with Meta earlier than connecting to WhatsApp, with extra particulars on the deal coming in March.
“There’s an actual pressure between offering a simple method to supply this interoperability to 3rd events whereas sustaining the privateness, safety and integrity of WhatsApp,” says Brouwer. wired. “I feel we’re fairly pleased with the place we landed.”
WhatsApp is making the change as a result of Meta is taken into account a “digital gatekeeper” below the DMA. This implies they must comply with a algorithm designed to advertise competitors between completely different digital providers. Though the DMA formally got here into drive final yr, the EU is giving watchdogs like Meta till March 2024 to conform. We nonetheless do not know if these modifications will solely come into impact within the EU or if they are going to be obtainable in different components of the world. The Verge contacted WhatsApp with a request for remark, however didn’t instantly obtain a response.
We noticed what third-party messages may appear to be on WhatsApp when WABetaInfo discovered a brand new “Third Social gathering Chats” part final yr. This discovering is predicated on what Brouwer says wired, he says, customers who allow the function will obtain messages from different platforms in a brand new part of their inbox. WhatsApp plans to disclose extra about its plans subsequent month and could have “a number of months” to implement the change.