With a month to go until the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is preparing to allow other messaging networks on its app.
In an interview with cablingDick Brouwer, director of engineering at WhatsApp, said the company is ready to offer interoperability on the platform with more than 2 billion users.
“There is a real tension between offering an easy way to offer this interoperability to third parties and at the same time preserving the bar of privacy, security and integrity of WhatsApp. “I think we’re pretty happy with where we’ve landed,” he told the publication.
The EU agreed to include messaging interoperability under DMA in 2022. This rule forces gatekeepers like WhatsApp and Messenger to open their services to other chat apps.
Meta is also working on adding support for other chat apps to Messenger. Initially, these experiences will focus on one-on-one chats where people can send text, audio, video, images, and files between apps. As WABetaInfo As previously reported, this experience will live in a new submenu at the top of your inbox called “Third-Party Chats.”
Brouwer, who worked on implementing end-to-end encryption for Messenger last year, told Wired that this will be a voluntary experience to prevent spam and scams.
“I can choose whether or not I want to participate, being open to exchanging messages with third parties. This is important because it could be a big source of spam and scams,” he stated.
Companies that want to be interoperable with Meta's system will have to sign an agreement, the details of which are not yet public. WhatsApp will require end-to-end encryption to enable interoperability. However, Apple's recently announced changes to the App Store could serve as an indicator that the terms might not be simple.
Recently, the founder of the open source Matrix messaging protocol, Matthew Hodgson noticed in a talk which has worked with WhatsApp on an “experimental” basis to get the protocol working with end-to-end encryption intact.
It is unclear if other operators such as Telegram, Viber and Google plan to add interoperability support with WhatsApp.
Brouwer told Wired that third-party chats and native WhatsApp chats may not reach feature parity, as interoperability could raise new privacy and security issues.
Apps that bring multiple messaging services under one umbrella have been in the spotlight for the past few months. Last October, WordPress.com owner Automattic bought Texts.com for $50 million. Beeper, from Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky, has been in talks over his effort, which Apple shut down, to bring iMessage to Android phones.
