The European Union has recently reached an agreement on a significant competition reform known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will impose strict rules on large tech companies that will have to offer users the ability to communicate with each other using different apps. WhatsApp is one of the companies that will be required to comply with the new regulations outlined in the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. This is because WhatsApp is considered a gatekeeper service since it’s a large tech platform with a substantial user base and falls within the criteria set by the DMA. With the latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.19.8 update, which is available on the Google Play Store, we discovered that WhatsApp is working on complying with the new regulations:
As you can see in this screenshot, WhatsApp is working on a new section dedicated to the new regulations. Since it is still in development, this section is still not ready, it appears empty and it’s not accessible to users, but its title confirms to us that they are now working on it. WhatsApp has a 6-month period to align the app with the new European regulations to provide its interoperability service in the European Union. At the moment, it remains unclear whether this feature will also eventually extend to countries beyond the European Union.
Interoperability will allow other people to contact users on WhatsApp even if they don’t have a WhatsApp account. For example, someone from the Signal app could send a message to a WhatsApp user, even without a WhatsApp account. While this broader network can definitely enhance communication with those people who use different messaging apps and assist those small apps in competing within the messaging app industry, we acknowledge that this approach may also raise important considerations about end-to-end encryption when receiving a message from users who don’t use WhatsApp. In this context, as this feature is still in its early stages of development, detailed technical information about this process on WhatsApp as a gatekeeper is currently very limited, but we can confirm that end-to-end encryption will have to be preserved in interoperable messaging systems. In addition, as mentioned in Article 7 of the regulations, it appears that users may have the option to opt out when it will be available in the future.
Third-party chat support is under development and it will be available in a future update of the app. As always, we will share a new article when we have further information regarding this feature.
yeah, there was totally no lobbying involved and the eu wants this for the greater good and innocent convenience of the european citizens. (btw, standard telegram messages aren't encrypted in the first place)
Dunno, but I don't see much benefit for whatsapp when, as stated, is the most used messaging app in europe, and all of us that dislike it are forced to use it because we don't live in a bubble.
They are. They are encrypted client to server and they are stored encrypted in the server. Yeah it's not E2E but saying that they are not encrypted makes it look like it is like whatsapp was for about 3-4 years until they implemented e2e, actual non encrypted messages. I would prefer if it were possible to have e2e in telegram normally, without losing all the utilities like being able to use it without having the phone connected but right now it's the only app that provides stuff that I use regularly.
If you have been following the improvements, whatsapp is lagging behind telegram in regard to stickers, message deletion, message editing, markdown bold/italized/monospace texts, idk if it even has spoiler blocks... yeah.
Also, for security there's signal but then my friends use telegram and family uses whatsapp, it doesn't have the utility features that telegram provides like voice calls to friends from the desktop...
Anyway, as stated I genuinely think that this is good for us non whatsapp users that need to interact with people that only use whatsapp and were forced to have it installed.