Interoperability (i14y) is a grift; my guesses:
1) EU privacy activists & legislators will rapidly sue Meta for not doing i14y correctly, i.e. not like they imagined (see below)
2) Several will call it monopolistic & exclusionary for Meta to push adoption of secure encryption via the Signal protocol
3) Zero of the top- or mid-tier messengers will implement i14y with Meta, because why make work & undermine your own value proposition?
4) …and the EU will therefore soon try to force them
5) A small (Finnish?) startup will launch an interoperable messenger after following the process; this will be hailed both as a huge success, and as demonstration of exclusionary practice, leading to yet more lawsuits.
All of this is inspired by this article on Wired:
[…] Messaging companies that want to interoperate with WhatsApp or Messenger will need to sign an agreement with the company and follow its terms. The full details of the plan will be published in March […]
https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-interoperability-messaging/
Brouwer says Meta would prefer if other apps use the Signal encryption protocol, which its systems are based upon. Other than its namesake app and the Meta-owned messengers, the Signal Protocol is publicly disclosed as being used in Google Messages and Skype. To send messages, third-party apps will need to encrypt content using the Signal Protocol and then package it into message stanzas in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). When receiving messages, apps will need to connect to WhatsApp’s servers.
Wispy-bearded privacy activists who pushed for i14y were envisioning that FACEBOOK WILL FINALLY BE BROUGHT TO HEEL — as they imagined they could achieve back when they were young academic firebrands — and THE POWER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION will (e.g.) obligate Meta to BEND OVER adopt a nice, sensible protocol, like XMPP for instance, or possibly something “federated” so that you could message anyone in the world by typing in something simple and intuitive, like an X.400 Email Address.
What they haven’t counted on is the free market:
So far, it is unclear which companies, if any, are planning to connect their services to WhatsApp. WIRED asked 10 owners of messaging or chat services—including Google, Telegram, Viber, and Signal—whether they intend to look at interoperability or had worked with WhatsApp on its plans. The majority of companies didn’t respond to the request for comment. Those that did, Snap and Discord, said they had nothing to add. (The European Commission is investigating whether Apple’s iMessage meets the thresholds to offer interoperability with other apps itself. The company did not respond to a request for comment. It has also faced recent challenges in the US about the closed nature of iMessage.)
Top-tier messenger platforms (Google, Apple, Meta, maybe Microsoft) don’t care about interoperability, they care about not being accused of being a cartel
Mid-tier (Signal, Snap, Twitter, Threema, Wire, Viber, Element, …) don’t want to make work for themselves by doing i14y and in the process cannibalise their ideals / value propositions
Bottom-tier (startups, hobbyists, “Read WhatsApp In Your Emails!” combo-app entrepreneurs) will try implementing and using interoperability, and the EU will use these as exemplar victims in order to create revenue-generating lawsuits.
One thought which amuses me is that there might be an argument for some mid-tier platforms — ones where messaging is not key to their existence — to solve their issues by “outsourcing” messenger features to (e.g.) Meta via the i14y APIs, so long as they can swallow the compliance risk; I doubt that anyone arguing for interoperability will have seen that one coming, because of course that’s not what’s meant to be happening.
Ah, unintended consequences.
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