To comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) of the European Union, WhatsApp, like many other large tech platforms, will have to make some significant modifications. The ability to interact with other messaging platforms is one of such modifications. Text messages, images, voice conversations, videos, and files transferred between individuals will be the first to be included in this shift towards interoperability. This would enable users to chat with individuals on WhatsApp using third-party apps like Signal, iMessage, Telegram, Google Messages, and so on. All of this, meanwhile, depends on whether the other businesses agree to partner with the Meta-owned app. There are also questions about how the app will protect and encrypt communications when it begins integrating other services.
WhatsApp wants all of the messaging apps it integrates to encrypt messages using the same Signal Protocol. As long as companies can demonstrate that their apps reach the security standards that WhatsApp outlines in its guidance, Meta is also open to apps that use different encryption protocols. Before the third-party services integrate with WhatsApp, they will also need to sign an agreement with Meta; additional details on the agreement are expected to be released in March. A more linked messaging environment is made possible by this initiative, but there are drawbacks as well, such as issues with user experience, privacy, and security.
It is due to Meta’s designation under the DMA as a “digital gatekeeper,” that WhatsApp is carrying out this change. To encourage competition among various digital services, it must abide by a set of regulations. The EU is allowing gatekeepers like Meta until March 2024 to comply, even though the DMA came into force legally last year. We still don’t know if these modifications will solely apply to the EU or if they will be available globally.
Last year, users caught a glimpse of what third-party messaging might look like on WhatsApp when a new section called “Third-party chats” was spotted. According to Brouwer, WhatsApp’s engineering director, users who enable this feature will receive messages from other platforms in a separate section of their inbox. WhatsApp plans to share more details about these plans next month and will take “several months” to implement the change.
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