Anyone who wants to migrate from WhatsApp to another messenger, be it Telegram or Signal, often faces a bigger obstacle than changing their phone number. Only a few of your previous contacts will be willing to switch to another app – and so you either lose contact with those people or simply leave both apps installed.
Not only is this quite impractical, it also consolidates the power of the internet giants: WhatsApp’s competitors like Signal only have a fraction of the users – the incentive to install such small apps is therefore smaller if you want to reach the largest number of people . as possible. This makes already big companies even bigger – and has ultimately led the EU to act to limit market power.
Texting across company boundaries
In the already complicated Digital Markets Law (DMA), the EU announces an even more complicated word: interoperability. Specifically, this should allow messengers to be compatible with each other, so you can also contact WhatsApp friends through other apps. All platforms that the EU classifies as insurmountably large – as “gatekeepers” – on the Internet must be accessible. This currently includes WhatsApp, but Apple’s iMessage is also being scrutinized in this regard.
“Porters”
There are currently six “guardian” companies and their services for the EU Commission: in addition to Alphabet, the parent company of Google, Apple and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, they are Microsoft, Amazon and the TikTok operator ByteDance.
In theory, this means that from next March WhatsApp will have to be compatible with other applications. In practice, however, there are some obstacles, because there are no fully thought-out solutions yet – and it is up to the network giants in question to offer one, as cryptography expert Paul Rösler from the Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen-Nuremberg does. in an interview with ORF.at he says.
This means: WhatsApp itself has to make its services available – without having precise specifications on how this access should work. The EU stipulates that security, such as encrypted chats, must be maintained. However, when ORF.at requested the European Commission, it only referred to the applicable deadlines; specific implementation was the responsibility of the respective companies.
Two approaches, but only one “economic”
Rösler explains that there are two approaches to this forced collaboration: On the one hand, you can develop a common standard that is open and accessible to everyone. However, for large services like WhatsApp, “the most economical and sensible thing to do,” says Rösler, is to simply grant access to their own servers and publish the appropriate documentation. This means that EU requirements are also met. Unconfirmed information from current preliminary versions of the messenger suggests that WhatsApp will likely follow this path.
But this apparent openness could also serve as a deterrent. Rösler is referring here to Microsoft, which, after much criticism, revealed the details behind file formats such as .docx and .xlsx for its Office software. But just as this work was documented in thousands of pages of documents – critics accused Microsoft of saying that only the software giant itself could handle this flood of information, but not other manufacturers for whom implementation had become an obstacle.
Applied to WhatsApp and other messengers, this would mean “it’s easy for WhatsApp,” but other app providers “may have to implement something that is significantly more complex,” says Rösler.
Other applications need to advance first
And in general, a company must first request access to WhatsApp, according to the new EU rules – and only then does Meta have to react. Signal, which is often advertised in Europe as an alternative to WhatsApp, probably won’t do this, at least for now. It’s unclear whether it’s because it can’t handle the additional effort required to implement it as a nonprofit, or because it prefers to stay away from Facebook’s parent company Meta in the interests of its often social-oriented user base. data protection.
ORF/Dominique Hammer Before an app can interact with WhatsApp, a corresponding app must be submitted
In the eyes of cryptography expert Rösler, the DMA does not allow for security concerns such as those feared in advance by activists. It’s certainly true that software is becoming more complex – “every line of code is vulnerable to attack,” says Rösler. At the same time, security risks – and data protection concerns – would also be minimized by eliminating unnecessary applications.
Jan Penfrat from the European data protection NGO EDRi sees Meta as a must and calls for an open solution that benefits everyone. Meta built its system “centralized from the ground up.” The subsequent conversion is “much more complex” when you already have two billion users. On the other hand, no one “forced Meta” to create a centralized system, this was done for purely commercial reasons – the intended goal of achieving a monopoly position with messengers was achieved, but now the late opening means a “huge effort”.
Visible results will take a long time to arrive
Here too, the EU gives large companies room for maneuver and the opportunity to postpone opening up to other services, if circumstances so require. According to Rösler, it could take a whole year before the first messaging apps are compatible with each other, because the process can still take a while, especially outside of purely technical details.
As long as larger services like Signal don’t jump on the bandwagon and require WhatsApp and possibly Apple interoperability as planned by the EU, this will all be a relatively small first step. Small messaging apps like Matrix and Wire currently play a minor role in the market at best. Only if the big players come on board can WhatsApp’s dominant position in the market change permanently.