Meta is obligated to open access to WhatsApp, but competitors do not want to play by its rules.
Due to the introduction of the extensive Digital Markets Act, many large technology companies will have to change their way of working and processing data in the European Union. One such company is Meta, whose WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps have been deemed "gatekeepers," which could prevent smaller competitors from gaining significant market share. Therefore, Meta should provide the ability to interact with other messengers in March 2024, but it seems that two promising competitors are not at all interested in this.
As Signal and Threema can now theoretically request, Meta should open up access to the basic interaction between their messengers and WhatsApp. However, both companies have made it clear that they are not interested in doing so, as reported by German IT magazine Heise Online.
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, told the publication :" Our privacy standards are extremely high, and we will not only not lower them, but also strive to increase them. Working with Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, or even the Matrix service would mean lowering our data protection standards."
A Threema representative expressed a similar point of view: "The main reason is that our security and privacy standards are incompatible with them. We cannot and will not deviate from these standards — they are the essence of Threema."
While adding the ability to interact with WhatsApp would potentially allow Signal and Threema users to communicate with a much larger number of people, both companies stressed that privacy is more important to them and their users.
While WhatsApp chats are protected with end-to-end encryption based on the same protocol used by Signal and Threema, WhatsApp does not provide the same advanced metadata privacy features. Metadata does not contain the content of messages, but it is still valuable and potentially sensitive because it shows who is communicating with whom and when.
Since WhatsApp is a closed-source application, there are concerns about what can happen to user data after it is transferred to the company, because third-party organizations cannot fully control the processing of this data. There are also restrictions on interaction, which can make it less attractive even for those interested in providing access to WhatsApp messengers. Apps need to sign a contract with WhatsApp and agree to use the same end-to-end encryption standard as the service. In addition, it is unclear whether WhatsApp will open its service to competitors around the world or restrict it to the European Union, similar to how Apple plans to offer a special version of iOS for the EU that meets the new regulations.
So far, Telegram, which is one of the five most popular instant messengers in the world and has a larger user base than Signal and Threema combined, has not released a statement about its plans to interact with WhatsApp.
Due to the introduction of the extensive Digital Markets Act, many large technology companies will have to change their way of working and processing data in the European Union. One such company is Meta, whose WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps have been deemed "gatekeepers," which could prevent smaller competitors from gaining significant market share. Therefore, Meta should provide the ability to interact with other messengers in March 2024, but it seems that two promising competitors are not at all interested in this.
As Signal and Threema can now theoretically request, Meta should open up access to the basic interaction between their messengers and WhatsApp. However, both companies have made it clear that they are not interested in doing so, as reported by German IT magazine Heise Online.
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, told the publication :" Our privacy standards are extremely high, and we will not only not lower them, but also strive to increase them. Working with Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, or even the Matrix service would mean lowering our data protection standards."
A Threema representative expressed a similar point of view: "The main reason is that our security and privacy standards are incompatible with them. We cannot and will not deviate from these standards — they are the essence of Threema."
While adding the ability to interact with WhatsApp would potentially allow Signal and Threema users to communicate with a much larger number of people, both companies stressed that privacy is more important to them and their users.
While WhatsApp chats are protected with end-to-end encryption based on the same protocol used by Signal and Threema, WhatsApp does not provide the same advanced metadata privacy features. Metadata does not contain the content of messages, but it is still valuable and potentially sensitive because it shows who is communicating with whom and when.
Since WhatsApp is a closed-source application, there are concerns about what can happen to user data after it is transferred to the company, because third-party organizations cannot fully control the processing of this data. There are also restrictions on interaction, which can make it less attractive even for those interested in providing access to WhatsApp messengers. Apps need to sign a contract with WhatsApp and agree to use the same end-to-end encryption standard as the service. In addition, it is unclear whether WhatsApp will open its service to competitors around the world or restrict it to the European Union, similar to how Apple plans to offer a special version of iOS for the EU that meets the new regulations.
So far, Telegram, which is one of the five most popular instant messengers in the world and has a larger user base than Signal and Threema combined, has not released a statement about its plans to interact with WhatsApp.
