With a month left until the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is preparing to allow other messaging networks within its app.
Dick Brower, director of engineering at WhatsApp, said in an interview with Wired that the company is ready to provide interoperability on a platform that has more than 2 billion users.
“There's a huge tension between maintaining WhatsApp's privacy, security, and integrity standards while providing an easy way to provide this interoperability to third parties. We're pretty close to where we're at. I think I’m satisfied,” he told the publication.
The EU agreed to include messaging interoperability in the DMA in 2022. The rules require 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 you can send text, audio, video, images, and files between apps. As WABetaInfo previously reported, this experience will appear in a new submenu called “Third Party Chat” at the top of your inbox.
Brower, who worked on rolling out end-to-end encryption for Messenger last year, told Wired that this will be an opt-in experience to avoid spam and fraud.
“I have a choice whether or not to participate in message exchanges with third parties. This is important because this can be a major source of spam and fraud,” he said.
Companies wishing to interoperate with Meta's systems will be required to sign a contract, the details of which have not yet been made public. WhatsApp requires end-to-end encryption for interoperability. However, Apple's recently announced changes to the App Store may be an indication that the terms may not be that simple.
Matthew Hodgson, founder of open source messaging protocol Matrix, recently said in a talk that he worked with WhatsApp on an “experimental” basis to make the protocol work with end-to-end encryption out of the box. .
It is unclear whether other carriers such as Telegram, Viber, and Google plan to add interoperability support with WhatsApp.
Brouwer told Wired that third-party chats and WhatsApp's native chats may not reach feature parity, as interoperability could introduce new privacy and security issues.
Apps that bring multiple messaging services under one umbrella have been gaining traction in recent months. Last October, WordPress.com owner Automattic acquired Texts.com for $50 million. Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky's Beeper is making headlines for his effort to bring iMessage to Android phones (which Apple has shut down).