Meta has finally offered more details on how it will ensure the interoperability of WhatsApp with other messaging services. A feature that will allow its users to send and receive messages to users of other applications, who will not need to install WhatsApp on their phone or have an account on the social network owned by Meta to be able to communicate with them. It will call them “third-party chats.”
These conversations with users outside of WhatsApp can be placed in the same status bar as the rest of the conversations or stored in a different folder. The company has designed a different notification process for messages arriving from other platforms and will also inform users when a new application is available for this interoperability.
To enable third-party chats, the user will have to select the option that allows the reception of these messages in the WhatsApp settings, although the company promises to hide it behind several menus. “We have heard loud and clear from other messaging services that the ability for users to connect with people using other applications must be clear and easy to find,” he says.
Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, has not yet given an exact date for the launch of third-party chats, although it is expected to happen before the end of 2024. In 2025, it will also allow the ability to create conversation groups with users of other applications and by 2027 it will include the ability to make voice and video calls.
These new features will only be available to WhatsApp users in the European Union. The company is considered a “digital gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which sets out special rules to prevent multinational tech companies from abusing their dominant market position.
One of them is the need to open their platforms to users of smaller ones. Its objective is to prevent users from being locked in the “walled garden” of a single company, forced to use only its tools due to a lack of interoperability with the rest of the services. The Messenger application, also owned by Meta – it was Facebook’s direct messaging tool before Mark Zuckerberg’s people decided to separate them – will also have to open its platform like WhatsApp.
According to data from Statist95% of Spaniards use WhatsApp and almost 30% Messenger. Among them, with an implementation of 40%, is Telegram. However, the application founded by Pável Dúrov has assured the European authorities that it only has 41 million users in Europe, which places it below the threshold of 45 million set by the DMA to be considered a “digital guardian” and have to open its services to other platforms.
However, Brussels believes that Telegram may have lied to evade EU regulations and is investigating the matter, as announced. Financial Time. “We have means to determine, through our own systems and calculations, the accuracy of user data,” recalled Thomas Regnier, the European Commission’s spokesperson for digital affairs. The refusal to cooperate with justice was one of the reasons that led to Dúrov’s arrest in France at the end of August.
Who will log in to WhatsApp?
The connection with WhatsApp will not be automatic for the rest of the applications. The company will require those who want to connect to its service to establish the Signal protocol for end-to-end message encryption. This standard for protecting communications is considered the most robust in the sector, but it is not the most widespread. Only Signal itself (one of the most secure messaging applications) and WhatsApp have it enabled by default.
Others like Messenger, Google Messages or Skype use the same protocol but only in private conversations and when both users select it. The same goes for Telegram, which only uses end-to-end encryption in so-called “secret chats”, but it is not the one developed by Signal. WhatsApp indicates in any case that it will allow interconnection with other protocols “if they are able to demonstrate that they offer the same security guarantees as Signal”.
Another unknown surrounding WhatsApp’s interconnection with third-party companies is privacy. End-to-end encryption protects the content of messages, but not the metadata they generate. That is, the participants in the conversation, the date and time of the conversation, its duration, the geographical location of the interlocutors or the devices they use are collected by WhatsApp. This raises doubts among many platforms that focus on the privacy of their users.
The most vocal in this regard has been Threema, an end-to-end encrypted app that does not collect its users’ personal data. Based in Switzerland, its business model is based on subscriptions. “To establish interoperability with WhatsApp, we would have to lower our privacy standards, which we are not considering under any circumstances,” Threema sources tell elDiario.es.
“For example, if a Threema user communicated with a WhatsApp user, we would have no way of knowing how WhatsApp handles the metadata of that conversation, because WhatsApp is not open source,” they add.
At the moment, it is unclear which apps will want to connect to WhatsApp to use its interoperability tools. elDiario.es also asked Signal, Telegram and Google Messages about this, but did not receive a response on their plans at the time of going to press.
