WhatsAppthe popular messaging app owned by Meta is preparing to comply with the European Union Digital Markets Act (DMA)which requires major technology platforms to offer interoperability with other services.
Details
According to WhatsApp engineering director Dick Browerthe company will announce its plans to support third-party messaging services in March 2024.
Because this matters
The DMA, which came into force last year, aims to create a fair and competitive digital market in the EU. It requires digital gatekeepers such as Meta, Google and Apple to make it easier for users to transfer their personal data from one service to another. other and allow other chat applications to communicate with their users. Meta has until March 2024 to implement these rules or face heavy fines.
Brower said Wired that WhatsApp will launch with one-to-one chats where people can send text, audio, video, images and files across apps. He said this will be an opt-in experience to avoid spam and fraud, and that WhatsApp will require end-to-end encryption to enable interoperability.
He also said there will be some differences between native WhatsApp chats and third-party chats, as interoperability could create new privacy and security challenges.
Digging deeper
It is not yet clear which other chat apps will be compatible with WhatsApp’s system. Brouwer said companies that want to be interoperable with Meta’s system will have to sign an agreement, the details of which are not yet public. Some possible candidates include; Google Messages, iMessage, Signal and Telegram, which are popular alternatives to WhatsApp. However, they may have different encryption methods or features that may not work well with WhatsApp.
Zoom out
WhatsApp is not the only Meta app that should open its service to other chat apps. Messenger, another messaging app owned by Meta, is also working to add support for other chat apps. This is part of Meta’s larger vision to create a unified messaging platform across its apps, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
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