The DMA requires that Meta “must be ready to enable interoperability with other services within three months of receiving a request,” but according to the blog post, activating it for public use could take longer. The requirements also call for only support for individual chats and the sharing of files such as images, videos or voice messages “in the first year” of the new regulation before they expand over time to include group chats and calls.
Meta says third-party providers will have to sign an agreement to interoperate with Messenger and WhatsApp before the company will work with them to implement it. The company requests that other providers use WhatsApp's Signal protocol for encryption, but says it will accept others if it finds they meet the same security standards.
The company promises that E2EE chats will be secure in transit, whether the other provider uses Signal or not. However, Meta does not guarantee that the applications that receive WhatsApp and Messenger users' chats will not do anything unpleasant.
