[HN Gopher] BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is in...
___________________________________________________________________
BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable
with WhatsApp
Author : joooscha
Score : 702 points
Date : 2026-01-24 19:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.birdy.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.birdy.chat)
| mcjiggerlog wrote:
| > With the new WhatsApp interface mandated by the DMA, any
| BirdyChat user in the EEA will be able to start a chat with any
| WhatsApp user in the region simply by knowing their phone number.
|
| Unfortunately, as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's
| side, this isn't really true. Honestly that decision alone means
| it's kinda dead in the water.
| dfajgljsldkjag wrote:
| It's better than nothing. If you have a different app and want
| to talk to your friend who uses whatsapp it's much easier to
| convince him to toggle a setting than to download a different
| app.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Could you clarify - What has been implemented as opt-in by
| WhatsApp to act as a hurdle?
| odo1242 wrote:
| Receiving message requests from third-party users. So you
| have to get the person you know to flip a toggle before they
| get the message.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Is this a per-contact setting or a "universal" one?
| dfajgljsldkjag wrote:
| Each whatsapp user needs to enable the setting once to
| allow chats with multiple number of third party users.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Account-wide. Though you can only turn it on in Europe.
| benj111 wrote:
| When you say Europe you mean the EU? I'm not seeing an
| option in the UK. (Yay Brexit)
| riffraff wrote:
| Yeah it's the EU, this is a result of the DMA regulation.
| I suppose the British government could enact a similar
| regulation tho.
| zeeZ wrote:
| It's a universal setting. You have to enable it per
| third-party app, though. You get to choose whether you
| want to see them listed with WhatsApp chats or in a
| separate folder
| progval wrote:
| It's universal, but you need to whitelist specific apps
| people can message you from. This is what it looks like:
| https://i.imgur.com/0gKY76z.png
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Yep, 100% malicious compliance on Meta's part. I hope they get
| punished for this.
| mlrtime wrote:
| How so exactly? They can say they are keeping conversations
| secure from 3rd parties.
| sagarm wrote:
| That doesn't make sense -- the parties to the conversation
| already _have_ the messages.
|
| Spam prevention is a likely angle, however. EU should force
| it to be opt-out, not opt-in -- probably what people want
| anyway.
| speleding wrote:
| I would like to be opted out by default. I'm worried at
| least one of those new services is going to get overrun
| by spammers, and if I'm opted in by default they could
| use the gateway to whatsapp to spam everyone else.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| How the opt-in is considered acceptable, that's a toothless
| resolution
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| because its EU only ????? you want it to be enabled by
| default while only certain amount of people want to use it
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Is it auto enabled on eu phones? If not, to ne it's not
| compliant
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I understand my agreement with WhatsApp - i read it and all. I
| have no agreement with that other app. I do not know what they
| would do with my data. Until they give me a privacy policy and
| i approve it, they indeed should have none of my data. Opt-in
| is the correct solution.
|
| I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant (that app is
| European and thus must care about GDPR). They do not have my
| permission to have/handle my private data, and GDPR does not
| allow WhatAspp to hand it over without my permission either...
| My name (which whatsapp exposes simply with my phone number) is
| considered PII under GDPR and
| lxgr wrote:
| What a strange way to think about a telecommunications
| service. By the same logic, shouldn't there be a privacy
| policy for regular old phone lines? Who knows which third
| parties are between you and the person on the other end!
|
| And speaking about the other end: I have bad news about all
| the data you share with untrustworthy contacts on WhatsApp...
|
| Quite practically, anyone that enables backups (which
| WhatsApp heavily nudges people to do) uploads a copy of all
| your messages and media sent to them to a cloud provider you
| have no privacy agreement with.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with
| merely my phone number. whataspp discloses name, picture,
| status
|
| As for your second comment, updated first comment with:
|
| I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant if that app
| is European. They do not have my permission to have my
| private data, and GDPR does not allow whatAspp to hand it
| over without my permission either...
| lxgr wrote:
| > whataspp discloses name, picture, status
|
| Only to who you choose to make it available to. And if
| you choose "everybody", I don't see how you can
| reasonably expect this to mean "everybody not using
| third-party software"?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Because until today that _IS_ what it meant! Are you
| claiming that "pray i do not change the deal further" is
| a sane approach?
| lxgr wrote:
| I just don't think that's a reasonable expectation of a
| telecommunications tool, so yeah, I think it's a fair
| change well within the norms and expectations of an
| instant messenger.
|
| You should get to control how/ to whom your data is
| distributed, but also requiring these recipients to only
| use software and services of your choosing seems
| excessive. Platform lock-in at this point seems like the
| much greater harm.
|
| I could see the case for a small indicator in the contact
| details that they're using a third-party client, but
| anything more (green bubbles?) would be
| counterproductive.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| i did not ask for green bubbles, nor did whatsapp
| implement that. they let me opt-in to communicate with
| questionable clients and i am here for it.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Do you also wish you could only get telephone calls from
| people using American made handsets, and that your email
| client asked you before receiving emails from other email
| clients, and that you couldn't get SMS's from other
| smartphone manufacturers without opting in one at a time?
|
| Being able to reject spam , regions, specific people,
| specific topics, all makes sense. Wanting to
| approve/reject the program used to make the connection is
| a pretty useless way to segment communications - how will
| you determine "questionable" clients, and what when
| there's a person you want to chat with and a person you
| don't both using the same client?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I actually would love a mode on my phone that blocks all
| calls not coming from iPhones just like I have a mode to
| ignore all messages not coming from iPhones. It has
| blocked so much spam that it is worth it.
| mlrtime wrote:
| It's not requiring, thats the point of BirdyChat, right?
| You just have to opt-in to use it.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The recipient is already using third-party code. I am
| using a Samsung OS, which is not from Meta, to see your
| messages. Do you object to this? I also have the YouTube
| PiP overlay layer in front of your messages.
| sagarm wrote:
| That is Zuck's usual MO, so why not apply it when it's
| not to his advantage?
| mlrtime wrote:
| Because I don't chose everybody? I don't want everyone to
| see my information, why would I?
| inexcf wrote:
| Man there's a rising amount of people who don't
| understand hypotheticals. How can you think that your
| comment "...I don't chose everybody?" is a valid answer
| to "If you chose everybody..." ?
| xmcp123 wrote:
| Old telephones had caller ID. They would send your name
| and company.
|
| You did have to initiate the call, but you still didn't
| have any kind of agreement about it.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Yes, and you used to have to pay for it! Not only was it
| opt-in, there was a charge.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Several people have scraped every possible phone number
| from WhatsApp so they know your name, picture, and status
| if they want it.
| mlrtime wrote:
| So, that doesn't mean we give it away freely because
| someone was malicious. That makes no sense.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| It's already given away freely. Anyone who has WhatsApp
| can add you as a contact and see this information.
|
| If you are bored and have a computer, you can add every
| possible phone number as a contact. Not many people do
| that, but some did.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with
| merely my phone number.
|
| Old telephone lines most certainly disclosed additional
| information about you. Who you contacted, when, how
| often.
|
| Did you call that drug dealer every Tuesday evening?
| Looks suspicious. Did that criminal call you the day
| before he robbed a store not far from your home? Looks
| suspicious. Do you call Pakistan twice a week? Looks
| suspicious. Have you ever called a suicide prevention
| hotline? A bank other than your own? A mosque? An
| independent political party?
|
| Your POTS phone was always revealing information.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > any WhatsApp user in the region
|
| The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. The only
| reason I keep a whatsapp account is to stay in touch with my
| family in law and a few relatives who live in another
| continent.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> The regional limit makes it pretty much useless._
|
| Sounds like an easy fix. Europe just has to convince the rest
| of the world to ditch the 15 year old popular US apps
| ingrained in pop culture and with network effects, and have
| them switch to their own EU made apps, this way we can all
| communicate together. :hugs: Until then, let's keep chatting
| on $US_APP so we can debate on how we're gonna achieve that
| switch.
| Grimblewald wrote:
| Shouldnt be hard to convince folks. Everyone i know hates
| facebook / meta and is just waiting for an agreed upon
| alternative.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| You realize that at the end of your sentence you've
| contradicted everything you've said from the start until
| that point, right?
|
| Maybe it was tongue in cheek and I missed it.
| Scarblac wrote:
| There is an ongoing move from Whatsapp to Signal. It's
| just very slow.
| xmcp123 wrote:
| Everybody says this until there's an alternative.
|
| There have been several alternatives, and people didn't
| switch.
| zarzavat wrote:
| The alternatives suck.
|
| WhatsApp strikes a good balance of usability and
| security. Telegram is too insecure (no E2E by default).
| Signal is too secure (no chat exports).
|
| Nobody has even bothered to make an app that stands toe-
| to-toe with WhatsApp, even without the network effects.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| You literally mention 2 of the biggest whatsapp
| competitor and you have audacity to says "Nobody has even
| bothered to make an app that stands toe-to-toe with
| WhatsApp"
| expedition32 wrote:
| Besides what WhatsApp does on a technical level can be
| fairly easily replicated.
|
| Getting the 2 billion users is the hard part. But that is
| marketing not coding.
| chii wrote:
| > But that is marketing not coding.
|
| it's the network effect.
|
| If normies who don't care for things (which is most
| people tbh) don't decide to switch, do you, as a
| techie/early adopter, just turn off whatsapp and
| disconnect with your normie friends? You are unlikely to
| be important enough in the friend group to force a
| switch, not to mention that this needs to happen enmass
| for a swing in the network effect to happen.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Being implacably stubborn is underrated. People can
| trivially have two messaging apps on their phone, which
| means they can all still contact you while using WhatsApp
| with other people. Then they all slowly end up with
| Signal on their phone, at which point who needs WhatsApp
| at all?
|
| "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
| unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to
| himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
| unreasonable man."
| arter45 wrote:
| Yes, you can have two messaging apps, but people will
| have a "main app" which is typically the one used by
| important people in their life (family, partner,...)
| and/or the one used by most people. Meanwhile, if you all
| use two apps, everytime you want to check up on a friend
| you have to check two apps.
|
| Imagine all your friends love pizza, as do you. Suddenly
| you decide sushi is better so, naturally, you tell your
| friends to try out sushi at the next dinner. Assuming
| some of your friends are not absolutely against sushi,
| yes, you'll have that sushi dinner. But what if they
| don't like it that much? They will revert to pizza or
| accept sushi, occasionally, when they want to see you,
| while still prefering pizza for all other interactions.
|
| There has to be a perceived advantage for changing
| habits. If few people see the benefits of Signal or other
| non-Whatsapp apps, they will not change their minds.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Meanwhile, if you all use two apps, everytime you want
| to check up on a friend you have to check two apps.
|
| You just have to check the one they use. Also, both of
| the apps would support notifications when something has
| happened in that app.
|
| > But what if they don't like it that much?
|
| There is no real advantage of WhatsApp over Signal except
| that some people are already using it, and a significant
| privacy disadvantage. Once someone already has Signal
| then the advantage of WhatsApp is gone and only the
| disadvantage remains.
| arter45 wrote:
| Everything is a trade-off.
|
| Signal trades some decreased convenience (for example in
| terms of backup) for some added security. Whatsapp has
| more "cosmetic" features (polls,...).
|
| If you value privacy over convenience and other features
| Signal is a great choice. If you value convenience and
| other features over privacy Whatsapp is a great choice.
|
| I think it's safe to say that different people have
| different priorities which result in different choices.
| chii wrote:
| > Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
|
| and only those who actually succeed being unreasonable is
| remembered. The other unreasonable people simply get
| forgotten or ignored - the vast majority.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Succeeding a small percentage of the time results in
| dramatically more success than having no one even try.
|
| Also, you're promoting defeatism. If it's just you and
| you succeed 1% of the time, it still helps a little. If
| it's millions of people -- even if that's a small
| minority of the population -- and they each succeed 1% of
| the time, that's actually a lot of groups getting
| converted. And it's _more likely to succeed_ the more
| people in each group who do it.
|
| So the conclusion should be that everybody should do it,
| since that improves everybody's odds, rather than that
| nobody should.
| zarzavat wrote:
| If it's so easy to replicate, why isn't there any other
| app that has replicated it?
|
| Signal is the closest but they fall short because they
| prioritize privacy over features. Which is their choice
| to make, but it means they have ruled themselves out from
| going mainstream. If you're not targeting feature parity
| with WhatsApp then you have zero chance of supplanting
| it.
|
| Telegram prioritises idk the FSB spying on your chats,
| that app gives me the creeps.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Signal has exports.
| neves wrote:
| Which non hacker news user exports chats?
|
| I'm the only person I know who ever did it.
| popol12 wrote:
| They released cloud backups recently and I believe they
| are also working on manual exports on iOS too
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Signal allows you to do local chat export for backup, as
| opposed to WhatsApp (which only allows backup to Google
| account on android). That's actually my biggest complaint
| against WhatsApp and Viber: why don't you allow local
| backup, or backup to something I control?
| j1elo wrote:
| Correction, in case you're interested: Whatsapp does (and
| has always done) allow local file backups. I know because
| they are just there on the storage:
| Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Backups/
|
| I also know because for many years I was VERY cloud-
| averse so for several iterations of smartphone purchases
| I did migrate my chat backups between phones (plain copy-
| paste of files with a computer) without issues.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I have lately been telling people whatsapp is from
| facebook (meta means nothing to them) and now they are
| looking for alternatives. Unfortunately, there isn't
| really much european/eu (never heard of birdychat
| though). It does show though it is not hard to get some
| people to switch; they have groups on whatsapp and use it
| for nothing else; these are people they chat with often
| so they only need to switch those and then whatsapp can
| go.
|
| I find Telegram the best app; its faster and easier than
| the rest I find. The default no e2e sucks so cannot use
| it for everything, but having everything immediately
| ready and working on _all_ devices makes it very nice.
| When you buy a new one, immediately all is there. Yes,
| obviously I am aware that can only be because no e2e, but
| normies and non normies alike seem to really hate the
| whatsapp, and even more, signal losing all your messages
| because backup /restore is too annoying. I wouldn't
| recommend it to anyone, but if someone manages to make
| more that experience... I mean turn it around; make e2e
| the default but allow people to create groups or 1-1
| without e2e if they want (knowing then downsides and
| upsides of that).
| maqp wrote:
| >working on all devices makes it very nice.
|
| Signal has end-to-end encryption working on all devices.
| Telegram doesn't because they're amateurs.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I didn't say Signal did not and obviously Telegram can
| make it work because they do have it if you switch it on
| per chat. So what do you mean?
|
| Edit: I guess you are from Ukraine? That is valid, the
| CEO is fishy. I did say I would not recommend it, I said
| it is the only performant and easy to use chat app I know
| off. That was a user perspective thing and more the hope
| of people pointing out 'no you fool here is another good
| one'. Definitely not Signal, slow and unfriendly.
| Whatsapp a little better, but Meta. Next.
| maqp wrote:
| >Telegram can make it work because they do have it if you
| switch it on per chat
|
| You can't enable 1:1 secret chat from your desktop
| client. The secret chat doesn't appear on desktop when
| you enable it on your phone. So you're forced to drop
| end-to-end encryption if you want interoperability
| between phone and desktop clients. You can't enable
| secret chats for group chats on any client. The company
| isn't working to make secret chats actually usable.
|
| >I guess you are from Ukraine?
|
| Nope.
|
| >Definitely not Signal, slow and unfriendly
|
| The thing is, friendly apps are apps that respect your
| human right to privacy. There's a term for applications
| that appear to do something useful while doing something
| against the user's interests without them knowing: A
| Trojan Horse. Which is a malware classification.
|
| When you view it through that lens, Telegram is the
| unfriendliest app out there outside completely
| unencrypted messengers like Palringo (at least used to be
| the case), where anyone can read your message from the
| cable with WireShark.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| There are many unfriendly apps on that light? insta chat,
| messenger, slack, discord, teams? and all of those are
| terrible software as well (slow, high mem etc); at least
| telegram is fast.
|
| anyway, the point was not to use or endorse telegram, or
| the garbage i mentioned, but strive for e2ee while fast
| and usable.
|
| I would sign up for anything e2ee but yeah ideally open
| source and hosting owned by an EU company.
| maqp wrote:
| > at least telegram is fast
|
| Telegram is fast precisely because it's backdoored by
| design. Forward secret messaging app with proper key
| management has to encrypt the message to every peer in
| the group. Telegram can just use single packet to server
| that then pushes it to everyone else. This difference
| will die over time as 5G and 6G take over and phones get
| faster by generation. Telegram will not get more safe by
| generation. They're only playing to get as many users to
| their roach motel to make it as difficult as people for
| people to leave.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Unfortunately, there isn't really much european/e
|
| What about Deltachat/Arcanechat?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| There's one. It's Signal. I keep telling people to use it
| and they keep not, because people are less likely to do
| things if they've been told they should do them.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Without interoperability with the chat platform all the
| regular people are already using, that's always going to
| be an uphill battle.
|
| I use Signal to communicate with other tech folks, but
| good luck convincing your dentist/doctor/etc to send
| reminders on signal instead of WhatsApp.
| sunshowers wrote:
| I talk to one of my doctors over Signal.
| j1elo wrote:
| To add a datapoint I can share mine: it's me who would be
| in a position to bootstrap the change in my circles, but
| I wouldn't use or recommend Signal _as Whatsapp
| replacement_ until the core features are on parity,
| including history backups, which have always been a
| lagging userstory for Signal.
|
| I think they have different (and somewhat opposing, even)
| targets, Signal wants to be extremely privacy protecting,
| and it's a disservice to their goals to sell them as a
| replacement for WhatsApp, because they're not.
| mhitza wrote:
| BTW Signal has a backup feature in the client (beta).
| Though can't say more about how it works since its a
| feature I do not need.
| jhasse wrote:
| Signal is so much worse than WhatsApp from a UX
| perspective. Backup sync forces you to allow background
| permissions (WhatsApp doesn't), you have to set and get
| nagged to enter a PIN every few weeks (WhatsApp doesn't),
| there's no transcription for audio messages (WhatsApp has
| that for some languages), the desktop app loses its
| connection if you don't open it ever few weeks (WhatsApp
| works fine), etc.
|
| If you want people to switch, recommend Telegram.
| maqp wrote:
| >If you want people to switch, recommend Telegram.
|
| Why would people switch from always-end-to-end encrypted
| group chats to never-end-to-end encrypted group chats?
| jhasse wrote:
| Because they don't even know what e2e encryption is.
| expedition32 wrote:
| My circle switched to Signal because we are concerned
| about tech bros and a fascist America.
|
| Boosting Russia is not the solution.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Telegram is not Russian. In fact Putin hates Pavel Durov.
| Batman8675309 wrote:
| Yes. Let's switch to an app with Russian connections that
| has actively refused to implement E2EE for over a decade
| now.
| jhasse wrote:
| Russian connections is FUD and Telegram has E2EE
| encryption, but not by default.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > agreed upon
|
| That is the main issue.
|
| There are alternatives but waaaay too many already. Some
| will say Signal, others matrix, xmpp, jami, deltachat,
| olvid, simplex, briar, tox,...there is a new one every
| couple of months but none everbody can agree on.
|
| The sad part is we were halfway there with XMPP 2 decades
| ago when both google and facebook were interoperable with
| it.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| It's not really about that but more that other countries
| start regulating the same way as WhatsApp and that way not
| all people would switch to these apps but they would have
| the opportunity to use it and keep talking with their
| friends and family
| neves wrote:
| Man, this is just a message app. It's trivial. The law must
| mandate it to work.
|
| It's not a technical problem. It's a political one
| fooker wrote:
| > It's not a technical problem
|
| How do you do encryption?
| zrm wrote:
| A probable implementation is that you bootstrap the
| initial key exchange using web PKI (if you want to talk
| to Alice@example.com then your client makes a TLS
| connection to example.com and asks for Alice's public
| key) and thereafter you use something like the Signal
| ratchet thing.
| lazide wrote:
| That technical solution is significant and unsolved. I
| don't think it would likely work without some major new
| standards either.
| catoc wrote:
| Serving 2+ billion daily users is a technical challenge
| at least
| speleding wrote:
| Not sure whether you would call this technical, but the
| difficulty lies in allowing third party access and still
| prevent spam.
|
| The reason Whatsapp won out over competing services in
| the first place (over here at least) was that they
| managed to be both free and relatively spam free. All
| free alternatives quickly got subsumed by spam (even non-
| free SMS has a spam problem nowadays).
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Email has solved that problem already.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > Man, this is just a message app. It's trivial. The law
| must mandate it to work.
|
| I don't know if you know this, but the EU cannot force a
| company to obey EU laws outside of the EU.
| neko-kai wrote:
| Yes, it can. And it has done so before.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Care to provide a link where the EU can tell a US company
| how to do business in Brazil (random country)?
| neko-kai wrote:
| Here's EU telling Microsoft how to conduct business
| globally, back in 2004 - https://economictimes.indiatimes
| .com/news/international/ms-s... - 'help rivals connect
| their products to the Windows operating system.' does not
| mean 'EU rivals', but any 'rivals', outside of the EU as
| well.
|
| 'Intel v Commission (C-413/14 P, 2017)' is another case
| where EU Antitrust explicitly punished global conduct
| outside of the EU.
|
| Right now, with exception of antitrust, EU laws only
| incidentally affect global conduct, e.g. once a business
| is compliant with GDPR, it's often too costly to restrict
| compliance just to the EU. Nothing stops that from
| changing. EU absolutely can make a law that obliges e.g.
| chat app providers to either apply EU privacy standards
| globally or face bans/fines/seizure of their EU
| operations.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > Sounds like an easy fix. Europe just has to convince the
| rest of the world to ditch the 15 year old popular US apps
| ingrained in pop culture and with network effects, and have
| them switch to their own EU made apps
|
| Are you on some funny medication or something? ROTFL.
| hei-lima wrote:
| In countries where SMS isn't as widespread as it is in the
| US, the use of WhatsApp is much more common.
|
| I live in one of those countries, and I don't think I've ever
| had to use it to communicate with someone on another
| continent. I think most of its use is simply local, for your
| community or friend group.
|
| The downside for me is basically the lack of appeal for a
| non-tech user (like my parents) to voluntarily want to stop
| using an app they've been using for, what, 10-12 years? It's
| not that big of a deal; everyone uses Instagram or Facebook
| (maybe)... WhatsApp is definitely going to make the process
| difficult, too.
| thevillagechief wrote:
| Whatsapp is more popular in the US than you'd think.
| Probably due to a large immigrant population. I'm in
| several groups that use the channels feature to organize
| things like soccer, game nights etc. Most people with
| family abroad use Whatsapp, and that's a huge portion of
| the US.
| abustamam wrote:
| I belong to two Toastmasters groups. One is majority non-
| immigrant American/caucasian, one is majority immigrant
| (from India, Pakistan, etc). The first one does club
| communication primarily via email. The second does club
| communication exclusively thru WhatsApp.
|
| It's an interesting divide.
|
| I do have some Caucasian friends who use WhatsApp. One
| stopped using it when FB purchased it, which I can
| respect. Most people I know in the states though just use
| iMessage or signal.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| SMS isn't widespread in the US, iMessage is.
| xvedejas wrote:
| It all depends on age group in my experience. My friends
| all a bit older than me prefer Messenger for everything.
| My friends all younger than me prefer Discord. I think my
| parents and their generation use iMessage, but I use
| WhatsApp with them. My generation used to use snapchat a
| lot, I think, but I never got on that boat.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > My friends all younger than me prefer Discord.
|
| That's interesting; I have and use discord myself (owner
| of a 300+ member server for my WoW guild), but I've never
| really considered it a messaging app in the same way I do
| iMessage, WhatsApp, and so on. I think because everyone
| is pseudo anonymous, it's more like social media to me.
| Plus I've got the phone numbers and iMessage groups for
| close friends I've made over discord.
|
| Given its popularity among gamers of all nationalities, I
| wonder where discord stacks up in relation to the EU's
| DMA?
| miki123211 wrote:
| Discord is popping up as shadow IT in some places.
| Because of all the server admin stuff (bot APIs, Github
| bots, pretty advanced RBAC etc), it's basically "Slack
| but for free, and without the annoying SSO."
| nozzlegear wrote:
| That sounds like my personal hell lol. Slack for free
| without the SSO, sure, but also Slack with constant
| annoying Nitro upsells and flashy gamer bullshit.
|
| (I just really don't like Discord and I'm bitter that
| it's what my guild de facto has to use because it's what
| gamers have standardized on.)
| efreak wrote:
| Being pseudonymous doesn't prevent you from using it to
| contact people you actually know offline. I used _Steam_
| to talk with my group members about a project in college
| a couple times. Other times I used Google chat
| /talk/whatever it was called at the time (embedded in the
| browser inbox). I had a flip phone at the time, so pretty
| much anything I could use on desktop was easier.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I just mean I've never thought to put it in the same
| category as iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. Like if
| the EU is going to regulate messaging apps, I wouldn't
| have thought to lump Discord or Steam chat in there with
| those other ones. But, honestly, why shouldn't they?
| B1FIDO wrote:
| SMS is _very_ widespread in the United States.
|
| All the B2C services I work with are sending SMS to my
| phone. Not RCS, not iMessage: they are sending SMS
| messages.
|
| All the MFA providers, such as Twilio and Okta, are
| sending SMS.
|
| All the political campaign spammers are sending SMS.
|
| All the reminders for appointments and bills are sending
| SMS.
|
| All the notifications for apps where Push isn't good
| enough: they're sending SMS.
|
| If user-to-user communication is using iMessage then that
| is fine. I have noticed that only about 2 of my human
| contacts use RCS, and at least 2 of them are using
| iPhones and not Androids for it. So that's some anecdata
| for ya!
| nozzlegear wrote:
| That's all automated bullshit that almost everyone would
| opt out of if given the chance. Nobody is using that by
| choice.
| temp8830 wrote:
| But you see, in other countries automated bullshit often
| talks to you over WhatsApp or Telegram instead.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Sure, but when I said that "SMS isn't widespread in the
| US, iMessage is," I meant that iMessage is what _people_
| use to message each other.
| slumberlust wrote:
| 40% of Americans are not using I whatever. I'd consider
| that widespread.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > I whatever
|
| iMessage?
|
| > 40% of Americans are not using [iMessage]. I'd consider
| that widespread.
|
| That doesn't mean those 40% are using SMS instead.
| stef25 wrote:
| > SMS
|
| Here in EU you pay for that. Soon as you send an image, you
| get charged extra. Completely useless compared to Whatsapp
| franga2000 wrote:
| Here in EU even the 5 EUR/month phone plans have
| unlimited SMS. As soon as you want to talk to someone
| without Whatsapp, you need to figure out which other apps
| they're on. Completely useless compared to SMS
|
| Have you considered that the EU isn't one country?
| thedonncha wrote:
| In Ireland on my otherwise very generous mobile phone
| account I'm charged for multimedia SMS texts. They're not
| included in my SMS bundle.
| B1FIDO wrote:
| Multimedia "texts" are actually MMS. In fact, if you send
| more than 160 characters, those are also MMS because it's
| an extension of the SMS standard.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Servic
| e
|
| It is not unusual for there to be hosting or intermediate
| storage of images and other files, and from the phone you
| may tap a link or something to download/access that file,
| instead of having it automatically download and appear
| immediately, due to bandwidth and resource constraints.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Aren't SMS that are over 160 characters being
| concatenated? There used to be a standard for that.
| AnssiH wrote:
| Generally yes.
|
| I guess a phone/app could exist that does convert to MMS
| instead, though, since the app can make that decision.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| In France, I'm "charged" for MMS, too. But that's
| actually considered "data", so it's deducted from the
| "internet" envelope which is quite generous (at least for
| my needs: I have multiple dozens of GB for under 10 EUR a
| month, of which I only ever went above 10 when backing up
| photos during a vacation with no wifi).
| abanana wrote:
| SMS is text only. If you're sending an image, you're not
| using SMS, you're using MMS.
|
| There are phone deals that include unlimited SMS
| messages, but not MMS.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Try searching for that message you send 5 years ago in
| Whatsapp vs SMS. Retrieval speed is unmatched. SMS wins.
|
| Now try, exporting all your whatsapp messges to standard
| format that can be interpreted in any text editor. Again,
| SMS wins.
|
| Looking for the abusive messages a nasty acquitance sent
| you? Again, SMS wins.
| woodpanel wrote:
| Exactly. Here in Europe, SMS feels like the fax machine
| of mobile communications.
| mbivert wrote:
| depends where; in France you can get unlimited
| SMS/MMS/calls, plus 350Go of data, for 20EUR/month [0].
| it's surprising the market hasn't developed likewise in
| other (European) countries; I (genuinely) wonder why -
| perhaps legal issues of some sort?
|
| edit: okay, sending MMS isn't always free, depends on the
| countries[1]. still free for USA, Europe, Canada, etc.
|
| [0]: https://mobile.free.fr/fiche-forfait-free
|
| [1]: https://mobile.free.fr/docs/bt/tarifs.pdf
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I think most of its use is simply local, for your
| community or friend group.
|
| I live in one such country, and indeed, the bulk of my
| usage is to coordinate with local groups based in the same
| city.
|
| But tend to meet many people from the US who don't live
| here, and they all straight up ask for my whatsapp.
|
| I'm also a heavy telegram and signal user, and can't recall
| a single instance of anybody mentioning these.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yeah I hate SMS. I don't want my carrier to be involved in
| the content of my communications. Also I normally use the
| computer when at home, no point using a tiny mobile device
| obviously.
|
| I don't use Google or Apple accounts either so RCS is out
| too. WhatsApp is meta now unfortunately but for historical
| reasons there's no avoiding it here.
|
| I use WhatsApp and Telegram pretty much exclusively
| (telegram more for group chats)
| bambax wrote:
| > _pretty much useless_
|
| To you maybe. Not everyone has overseas contacts.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Not everyone has overseas contacts
|
| It's not really the "overseas" usecase that is the sticking
| point for many businesses.
|
| Does your business in Spain ever need to message Brits who
| are there on holiday? Does your business in Greece ever
| have customers who drive across the border from Albania?
| prmoustache wrote:
| We live in a global world and this is super common
| nowadays. In my own family 2 out of 3 sibling are married
| with someone who was born in a different continent, one in
| Asia, the other in Latin America.
|
| And we both met them here in Europe.
|
| People are so welcoming in latin america that when you
| marry someone, you literally marry the whole extended
| family. After just a handful of years is not like my
| partner's aunts and cousins are strangers to me. I can
| contact them anytime for advice on a topic related to their
| work/career field and they will do so about mine.
|
| Add to that some cousins and friends who moved overseas and
| I have many regular contacts that live more than 10000km
| away from me.
| krzyk wrote:
| It is an unique feature.
|
| Most people communicate with the ones in their region. Even
| when going on vacation most people can afford only to travel
| around their own continent.
| miki123211 wrote:
| "on your own Continent" != "in the EU."
|
| Ukraine isn't in the EU, neither is Swicerland, Norway or,
| most famously, the UK. All of these are on the European
| continent, all of these have citizens living right near a
| border with an EU country and regularly having to
| communicate with the EU side.
| krzyk wrote:
| This is for EAA, which includes Switzerland, Norway and
| even Turkey.
|
| Yes, it does not include UK, but that's on them.
|
| I encourage people living in other countries to complain
| to their goverment on Metas policies.
| Tom1380 wrote:
| I'm in Switzerland and I can confirm that it applies here
| too
| zjaffee wrote:
| I'm originally from the US, but where I live now, whatsapp
| functionally replaced email for a lot of different types of
| communication (that would be an email in the US). Recruiters
| text me on whatsapp about jobs, I can ask for a prescription
| renewal through it, and I get support from everything ranging
| from a government agency to customer support for things from
| businesses, ect.
| yapyap wrote:
| > The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. The only
| reason I keep a whatsapp account is to stay in touch with my
| family in law and a few relatives who live in another
| continent.
|
| ... useless FOR YOU. not useless overall. its just that you
| in your limited use case cannot use it.
| zoobab wrote:
| "opt-in"
|
| FAIL
| raverbashing wrote:
| > as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side
|
| Chatting with anyone has always been opt in from the point of
| the receiver, so I don't get your point?
| urbandw311er wrote:
| > any BirdyChat user
|
| And how many of these are there? Anyone?
| moffkalast wrote:
| I thought the stupid name was enough to kill it tbh. I'm not
| telling anyone they can call me on "birdychat" lmao.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| While I also don't think Birdychat is a good name, you could
| also argue that "Whatsapp" is a weird name for an app
| billions of people use.
| jrowen wrote:
| WhatsApp is a bizarre name, and I think that contributes to
| it occupying a "lower rent" space than the others (the
| goofy chat background also helps). But I think most people
| ultimately gloss over the joke and it just becomes kind of
| abstract.
|
| With BirdyChat though, it feels like you'll be confronted
| by its silliness in perpetuity.
| wohoef wrote:
| Just opened my Whatsapp settings and "Third-party chat
| requests" is on by default (From the Netherlands). Although to
| actually receive messages you do have to activate this feature.
| 1a527dd5 wrote:
| I wonder if this will force Apple to open up iMessage.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Last I heard iMessage was not deemed an eu "gatekeeper" so no
| serial_dev wrote:
| I don't know anyone in Europe who uses iMessage, everyone is
| on WhatsApp though.
| uriegas wrote:
| I believe iMessage is only used in the USA. In Latin
| America almost everyone uses WhatsApp.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Exciting news! Can't wait for iMessage to open up too. Any idea
| if this (or other future messengers) will work _outside_ of
| Europe too or does WhatsApp use some kind of geofencing, like
| Apple, to prevent non-EU citizens from enjoying the same rights
| too?
| thevillagechief wrote:
| iMessage will not be opening up. They lobbied hard in the EU
| and got an exemption for not being popular enough there I
| guess.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Did they lobby for an exemption, or is that just how the law
| is written?
| bsimpson wrote:
| The DMA is enforced by bureaucracy. The commission proposes
| that certain platforms are big enough to be regulated, and
| then there's a comment period/negotiation. The list of
| platforms currently being regulated is publicly available.
| bootsmann wrote:
| There is a hard number of users you have to achieve, its
| one of the reasons why iOS had to allow third party app
| stores but playstation did not.
| arter45 wrote:
| In fact, Apple is still part of the DMA list with Safari,
| iOS, iPad OS and App Store.
| drcongo wrote:
| I might be misremembering, but I think iMessage
| implementing RCS was the compromise.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Unlikely, iOS still doesn't support RCS in most European
| countries.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| iMessage isn't popular enough in Europe to be broken up
| by the DMA from what I recall.
| Hamuko wrote:
| iMessage really isn't popular in Europe. Although the fact
| that any SMS sent between two iPhones automatically converts
| into an iMessage message means that there are definitely
| (accidental) users.
| TZubiri wrote:
| But iMessage is already open? You can send an SMS to any number
| and it shows in iMessage, completely interoperable through that
| standard protocol.
|
| Whatsapp on the other hand does not show SMS messages (Which is
| a design choice that makes sense from a security perspective I
| guess, not saying it's wrong.)
| kelnos wrote:
| You're confusing two different things, though I don't blame
| you for it, as it _is_ confusing. "iMessage" is the OTT
| E2E-encrypted chat protocol. "Messages" note the lack of the
| leading "i" and trailing "s") is an iOS app that lets you
| send and receive messages using both the iMessage and
| SMS/MMS/RCS protocols.
|
| iMessage is not open, and Apple fights efforts by other
| companies (e.g. Beeper) to interoperate with it.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Ok then, Apple's Messages is interoperable, as you can
| communicate via SMS with its users.
| nottorp wrote:
| > You can send an SMS to any number
|
| Can you send a photo?
| blell wrote:
| Yes, through MMS or RCS.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| So, no. MMS is increasingly being discontinued in several
| regions, and RCS support is extremely patchy worldwide,
| especially on iOS.
| nottorp wrote:
| Let's rephrase: can you send a photo hassle free?
| cheema33 wrote:
| > But iMessage is already open?
|
| How do you send/receive messages from a Windows system? My
| guess is that you think iMessage is SMS-only.
| TZubiri wrote:
| >How do you send/receive messages from a Windows system?
|
| You can send an SMS.
|
| >My guess is that you think iMessage is SMS-only
|
| No, there's Apple's proprietary protocol, that you can only
| use on Apple devices. But from non Apple devices you can
| use the standard SMS.
| cheema33 wrote:
| >> My guess is that you think iMessage is SMS-only
|
| > No, there's Apple's proprietary protocol...
|
| Earlier you asked: "But iMessage is already open?"
|
| Now you are saying that iMessage uses "Apple's
| proprietary protocol". I hope now you understand that
| when people say that Apple iMessage is not open, they are
| not talking about the SMS protocol that Apple does not
| own.
| B1FIDO wrote:
| I must protest that this kind of announcement belies the
| stupidity of proprietary chat protocols.
|
| Remember when IRC was king, and basically, anyone could write an
| IRC client? Anyone could write a MUD client, or even a Telnet
| client. Those are open protocols.
|
| When Pidgin came out, it was like a breath of fresh air for me.
| In the early 90s I had multiple IM accounts (starting with ICQ!)
| and unifying them, especially under a Linux client, was a dream
| come true.
|
| But of course, AIM purported to use Oscar at the time, but they
| really hated F/OSS and 3rd-party clients, and so did the other
| proprietary guys, so it became cat-and-mouse to keep the client
| compatible while the servers always tried to break their
| functionality.
|
| Now this dumb announcement comes out that a 3rd party has
| (apparently legally) established interop with a Meta property
| with (I am guessing) a completely proprietary, undocumented,
| secret protocol underneath.
|
| I am not impressed. I am McKayla Maroney unimpressed.
|
| I want open protocols and I want client devs who are free to
| produce clients in freeform, as long as they can follow the
| protocol specs. Now we have email clients who speak SMTP, IMAP,
| and POP3, including the "secured, encrypted" versions of those
| protocols. We should ask for nothing less when it comes to other
| communications.
| PEe9bB7D wrote:
| Matrix is getting traction though...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Matrix is a lost cause. The protocol is too complex/ambitious
| and the company behind it doesn't have the resources to
| actually produce a good server nor client implementation. I
| was hopeful for it at first but at some point you have to be
| realistic.
| zenmac wrote:
| While I agree with you, and there should more diverse
| members than just the people from Element.
|
| What I do like about them is the zero server trust stand
| they are taking on their clients which makes migration a
| pain in the butt, but that is what one would expect from a
| true e2ee chat app.
|
| And now they have two stable servers in rust. The French
| and German government including military are using the
| protocol to make their own apps. Maybe it should be
| something the EU should put some more resource into it?
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| German Healthcare will also be using Matrix
| palata wrote:
| > What I do like about them is the zero server trust
| stand they are taking
|
| Last time I checked, the Matrix servers had access to _a
| lot_ of metadata. Did they fundamentally change it?
| velocity3230 wrote:
| Encrypted metadata is in the works.
| vpShane wrote:
| It was the invite floods of what was probably CP and cat
| torture that made me uninstall it and never look back.
|
| No thanks on that. I don't have time or energy for these
| things.
| kelnos wrote:
| Is it? My experience with it has been middling at best, and I
| communicate with exactly zero people through Matrix outside
| of the context of open source projects.
|
| The UX is still pretty bad, with many rough edges around
| sign-in and device verification. The message/encryption story
| has gotten better (it's been a long time since I've gotten
| spurious errors about being unable to decrypt messages), but
| it's still not particularly easy to use. Performance-wise
| I've found it to still be fairly bad; loading messages after
| I've been offline takes a noticeable amount of pause,
| something I rarely see with other messaging platforms.
|
| On the plus side, Matrix does have many chat features that
| many people like (or even require) in a chat platform, like
| formatting, emojis, message reactions, threads, etc.
| otterley wrote:
| We had XMPP, and even Google Chat used that in the early days.
|
| It's not like users haven't had choice over the decades to
| choose software that runs on open standards. It's that the
| features and UX provided by closed software has been more
| compelling to them. Open standards and interoperability
| generally aren't features most people value when it comes to
| chat. They care mostly about what their friends and family are
| using.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The issue isn't closed vs open but business models. The
| reason most services don't support third-party clients is
| that their business model is based on advertising (aka
| wasting the user's time) and a third-party client would
| reduce said wasted time.
|
| A proprietary/for-profit messenger can very well use open
| protocols and embrace third-party clients if their business
| model wasn't explicitly based on anti-productivity.
| otterley wrote:
| The problem is that there's not much of a market for an
| ecosystem of commercial chat clients that use open
| standards underneath. It's not like it hasn't been tried.
| What ultimately ends up happening is the market becomes a
| race to the bottom, chat clients become a commodity
| product, and innovation ceases. It's essentially what
| happened with Web browsers and why we don't have a
| particularly robust for-profit market in that space.
| kelnos wrote:
| Right. Unfortunately, people have overwhelmingly voted with
| their wallets, and prefer to pay with their time and
| attention (and ignore the fact that they're being
| psychologically manipulated into buying random products and
| services) than with actual cash.
|
| I expect you could get _some_ people to pay for a messaging
| platform, but it would be a very small platform, and your
| business would not grow very much. And most of your users
| will still have to use other (proprietary, closed)
| messaging services as well, to talk to their friends and
| family who don 't want to pay for your platform. While that
| wouldn't be a failure, I wouldn't really call that a
| significant win, either.
|
| This is why legislation/regulation is the only way to make
| this happen. The so-called "free market" (a thing that
| doesn't really exist) can never succeed at this, to the
| detriment of us all.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| The thing is, it wouldn't have to cost a lot.
|
| Signal spends $50M a year for about 100 million active
| users. That's 50 cents per user per year. Or 4 cents per
| month :) Even with a bit of profit it's still nonsense
| money.
|
| And 6 million of that alone is going up in sms validation
| because they insist on using mobile numbers as an
| identifier. They could save that if they used other
| methods.
| petre wrote:
| Google Chat used XMPP to build an user base and then cut it
| off from the Jabber network. That's when I stopped using it.
| Or was it when it got integrated into Gmail? Then they
| rebranded it and binned each iteration several times.
| palata wrote:
| Similar to Slack and IRC? I guess that's just part of the
| enshittification process.
| holri wrote:
| WhatsApp uses the open Signal Protocol.
| pipo234 wrote:
| Pedantic: I think you meant to say open _whisper_ protocol,
| the end to end protocol which is Whatsapp copied from Signal.
| palata wrote:
| The name of the protocol is "Signal".
| sedatk wrote:
| That's a bit misleading. WhatsApp uses Signal's end-to-end
| encryption scheme, but not Signal's networking protocol. It's
| still proprietary. Otherwise, we could have cross-messaging
| between Signal and Whatsapp.
| holri wrote:
| WhatsApp just implemented cross messaging using the open
| Signal Protocol forced by the EU. We will see if the Signal
| messenger enables interop with WhatsApp, they are not
| forced to do this.
| arter45 wrote:
| Social networks and chat apps are mostly dominated by the
| network effect.
|
| Since the purpose of these apps is literally putting you in
| contact with other people, you tend to use the same app/social
| network most of your friends and family are using.
|
| This is not necessarily true for platforms you use to find new
| people, but even then, you're going to use the websites/apps
| people with your interests are using.
| pipo234 wrote:
| I don't think his rant is against social networks or instant
| messaging perse, but about vendor lock in.
|
| The way I read it is along the lines of Mike Masnick's
| _protocols not platforms_.
|
| https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-
| platforms-a...
| arter45 wrote:
| I understand, but in this specific arena, because of the
| network effect, interoperability is important so you can
| hope to make a competitive product.
|
| More in general,standard protocols are important but they
| don't necessarily avoid lock-in.
|
| For example, imagine a Dropbox equivalent with a public API
| specification.
|
| At some point you want to leave. You are ready to use
| Postman or even curl and download everything to upload it
| somewhere else... but download is capped at 10 files/day
| per user. And you uploaded 100,000 files over years.
|
| The API is public but good luck leaving with all your
| files!
|
| In other words, standard protocols help avoiding _client_
| lock-in, but when the value is on the server side
| (data,...), they are not enough.
| buildfocus wrote:
| > Now this dumb announcement comes out that a 3rd party has
| (apparently legally) established interop with a Meta property
| with (I am guessing) a completely proprietary, undocumented,
| secret protocol underneath.
|
| Resd the article - this isn't a proprietary secret API, it's
| the official intended interop API the EU now obliges them to
| provide. Not exactly 100% what you're asking for (I too would
| prefer common standards) but forcing interop access is a very
| good start.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I must protest that this kind of announcement belies the
| stupidity of proprietary chat protocols. [...] In the early 90s
| I had multiple IM accounts (starting with ICQ!) and unifying
| them, especially under a Linux client, was a dream come true._
|
| ICQ was _also_ a proprietary chat protocol. The Pidgin (then
| "Gaim") developers had to reverse-engineer it. Fortunately the
| folks at ICQ were less hostile toward third-party clients than
| AOL was toward Gaim's reverse-engineer of AIM's protocol, as
| you note. (Not to mention sending legal threats to the
| Gaim/Pidgin team to get them to change the name of the app.)
|
| IRC was indeed king, when the internet was populated mostly by
| technically-savvy folks who could deal with its rough edges.
| (For example, you probably forget how annoying it was to get
| file transfer working over IRC; sometimes it was just
| impossible to do, depending on clients and NAT conditions and
| so forth. Things like ChanServ and NickServ were creative, but
| inelegant, hacks, functions that the protocol should handle
| directly.) And consider that IRC has more or less not changed
| at all in decades. I _am_ a technically-savvy user, and I gave
| up on IRC, switching to Matrix for those types of chats, which
| has its own rough edges, but at least has modern features to
| sorta kinda make up for it. (Otherwise I generally use Signal,
| or, if I can 't get people to switch, Whatsapp.) I _want_ to be
| able to do simple formatting, react to messages, edit messages,
| etc. And most people in the world seem to want those things
| too. IRC has stagnated and doesn 't meet most people's needs.
|
| But I absolutely agree in that I want open protocols too. It's
| just hard to fight against big corporations with endless
| development, design, and marketing budgets. And those big
| corporations are not incentivized to build or support open
| protocols; in fact they are incentivized to do the opposite. As
| much as the EU does get some things wrong, I think we need
| strong governments to force companies to open up their
| protocols and systems for interoperability, and to stamp down
| hard on them when they comply maliciously, as Apple and Meta
| does. The EU is pretty much the only entity that comes close to
| doing that. I really wish the US was more forward-thinking, but
| our government is full of oligarchs and oligarch-wannabes these
| days, thanks to the lack of any meaningful campaign finance
| limits. At least California (where I live) has some GDPR-
| inspired privacy legislation, but I think something like the
| EU's DMA is still too "out there" for us here, unfortunately.
| B1FIDO wrote:
| ICQ was not only proprietary, but it was centralized and
| server-based, even though the messaging part was peer-to-
| peer.
|
| Even in those heady early days of the mid-90s, it was
| recognized that many end-users were behind NAT and firewalls
| and otherwise-inaccessible endpoints of the Internet. Many of
| us were also on dialup lines that were intermittently
| connected, so they needed to establish some sort of
| persistent presence.
|
| So the ICQ client was designed to check-in with a central
| server to indicate the online/away/DND/offline status of the
| client. I do not know how much of ICQ's messaging went
| through that server, but I believe that a lot of clients in
| those days were designed to, eventually, connect peer-to-peer
| for delivering files and stuff. Mainly, because the operators
| of servers didn't want to be overwhelmed with transferring
| lots of data!
|
| Interestingly, ICQ and Livejournal as well were completely
| invaded and taken over by Russians. Or perhaps it was not an
| invasion, but a planned psy-op all along. My original UIN was
| 279866, and my girlfriend's was slightly below that: she had
| signed up first and got me on-board.
|
| But eventually, Russians broke into my account, changed the
| profile, and commandeered it for their own purposes. And
| Livejournal got sold to Russian interests too.
|
| I believe it was them watching us over here all along. It
| must have been a personal-data goldmine to know when teens
| and young adults were online and who they were connected to,
| on the social graph, whether it was IM'ing or blogging the
| old-fashioned way on Livejournal.
|
| So beware with your modern "disruptive" apps, particularly
| ones like those fun e-Scooters you can share and rent. They
| are probably psy-ops from foreign-based actors who enjoy
| watching and recording our movements.
| altern8 wrote:
| This is pretty amazing, but I wish they picked a better name for
| it. I have a feeling that a good amount of people will dismiss it
| just because of the name.
| snowmobile wrote:
| What's wrong with the name? Some cultural reference I'm not
| getting?
| Onavo wrote:
| Twitter. Also it could mean penis (in some places).
| altern8 wrote:
| It just sounds--let's say--too playful.
|
| Specially if you go to the homepage and they're trying to
| market it as a work too.. If I went to my boss and tried to
| make the case that we should move all of our encrypted
| communication from Whatsapp to something called BirdyChat
| they would laugh at me and dismiss the idea.
|
| That might just be me, not sure.
| drcongo wrote:
| It's not just you.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| What would they think about a "Slack" at work
| altern8 wrote:
| They would probably cut them some slack and buy it
| anyways.
| snowmobile wrote:
| Because a pun on "What's Up?" and "App" is so professional?
| Maybe I'm old but I remember a time when I though WhatsApp
| was an extremely silly name for a SMS replacement.
| drcongo wrote:
| I couldn't work out what the hell the app _is_ from the
| website, as the home page tells you it 's a "New Home for
| Work Chat" and mentions "Still using personal chat apps for
| work conversations?" - so I'm guessing it's supposed to have
| some business focus, but the app name makes it sound like
| something you'd install for your kids. I can't imagine ever
| saying to someone "we need to discuss contract details, let's
| talk on BirdyChat".
| altern8 wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
|
| It looks like it's focused on business but its name sounds
| childish. If I mentioned that in a corporate meeting people
| would just laugh at me, I don't think it helps their case.
| snowmobile wrote:
| The silly names for "work apps" has been a meme since at
| least 2022.
| https://x.com/gossipbabies/status/1487161069143576576
| wiether wrote:
| Personally I hate the name because it reminds me of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdy_Nam_Nam (whose work I
| like)
| TZubiri wrote:
| It can always be rebranded later on
| kelnos wrote:
| What's wrong with the name? "WhatsApp" sounds pretty dumb to
| me, too, but it's entrenched in the social consciousness, so we
| don't really think about it.
|
| (The name even has nothing to do with chat; originally WhatsApp
| was a way to share your "current status"; "WhatsApp" sounds
| like "what's up?".)
| altern8 wrote:
| I don't think Whatsapp sounds dumb. It's "what's up", and it
| came out when mobile apps were getting popular with everyone.
| I immediately got it when I heard it the first time, and it
| sounded good to me.
|
| "BirdyChat" just sounds childish.
|
| Maybe I'm in the minority, who knows, but project names are
| important. I've seen so many posts of people dismissing
| projects just because of the name...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Gimp would have to be the extreme example of this. I used
| to recommend Krita to people, despite it being less
| appropriate for photo editing, just to avoid using 'Gimp'
| in work/polite scenarios.
|
| I agree - "Birdy" is the name used with infants when
| talking about birds, or is a bird toy that photographers
| use to distract people ... which is a bit too close to the
| truth, perhaps.
|
| To me it also suggests 'a toy version of Twitter'; and
| Twitter already had enough negativity around it for me.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Somehow I feel like GIMP's lack of popularity has more to
| do with its reputation for having a horrendous and
| impenetrable interface than its name.
|
| At one point in the recent past there was a fork of GIMP
| named "Glimpse," yet weren't a sudden influx of users who
| were waiting for a more polite name.
| altern8 wrote:
| I would say both.
|
| BUT, lack of users might just be that it's too late, now.
| People use web-based tools like Figma, I wouldn't think a
| lot of people are looking for a Photoshop alternative.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Krita is doing just fine. It has the subjectively
| "better" name, but also the improved UX.
|
| We're missing the last part of this quadrant with a
| Krita-like app that has great UX but a bad name, but the
| preponderance of the evidence thus far tells me that it
| is more likely than not that the name didn't matter, or
| at the very least that the UX definitely did matter while
| the name might not have.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Complaining about names seems like a surefire way to induce
| endless bikeshedding conversations that go nowhere. It's also
| often cited as a too-convenient excuse for why a service
| fails that doesn't really account for the market realities or
| whatever systemic failures were at play.
|
| The truth is that 15 years ago, "tweet" was seen as a joke by
| those who weren't extremely online. It didn't stop Twitter
| from becoming a desirable place to socialize, at least for a
| time. If the internet made "tweet" happen, people can get
| used to any weird nomenclature.
| trinix912 wrote:
| The problem I have with names like BirdyChat is they're not
| easy to remember and even less easy to explain to someone
| whose first language isn't English. Like yeah, we know it's
| "Chat" and "Bird" combined and all but to a lot of people
| it's just "Bdytsch something". Compare that to Twitter
| which is relatively easy to pronounce and remember.
|
| Forgejo is even worse in that regard. I live in Europe,
| speak 5 languages, and still have to think to remember the
| proper pronunciation every time.
|
| It's much harder to get people on board with _yet another
| messenger app_ when they forget the name 5 minutes later.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| Birdy evokes the same energy as "BabySeal". I imagine you can
| understand why an app called "BabySealChat" would be off-
| putting to a thirty-something disgruntled developer?
| odo1242 wrote:
| How does this work with end to end encryption? Just out of
| curiosity
| snowmobile wrote:
| Sorry to be "that guy", because I don't know the details of how
| WhatsApp does E2EE, but in any proper (as in secure and
| private) implementation the only thing that should matter is
| whether the client follows the spec? You might as well ask, how
| does $browser work with HTTPS?
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| I think the suspicion is based on this app being offered in a
| region whose government is hostile to privacy and this
| implementation being connected with the strong nativist bent
| in Europe.
|
| The "spec" is not relevant in any way because we have no idea
| what else is going on. Why was it relevant that these
| operators must specifically be in the EU? Everyone is just
| complying with the global spec...but the app provider must be
| in Europe...okay.
| oblio wrote:
| > region whose government is hostile to privacy
|
| Which government?
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| EU. I don't think it is any better at the national level
| however.
| oblio wrote:
| The EU is not a government. It's a loose economic
| confederation. And national European governments vary
| wildly in their positions on this.
| snowmobile wrote:
| Call it what you want but the fact remains that they can
| write a lot of laws the member countries must follow, for
| better or worse. GDPR, Chat Control, etc.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| It isn't an "economic confederation". It has a
| parliament, an executive, a judiciary, and a civil
| service. I would read the wiki page on the European
| Union.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > Why was it relevant that these operators must
| specifically be in the EU
|
| The integration is only possible because the EU forced
| Meta's hand. The law only applies to massive digital
| empires with gatekeeper levels of control.
|
| I don't think the EU would mind at all if Meta would permit
| American companies to interoperate with them. Meta won't
| just permit it, they have to protect their WhatsApp
| Business money machine of course.
|
| That's also why the feature is only available to EU
| numbers. Not because BirdyChat hates Australians, but
| because WhatsApp won't permit them to send messages to
| numbers from those countries.
| Trufa wrote:
| That's not what OP is asking, he's asking how do you have two
| separate e2e encrypted apps that can interact.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Yep. And apparently the answer is they both use the Signal
| Protocol.
| snowmobile wrote:
| By following the same protocol... This has been done for
| ages. PGP and GPG for example.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I can confirm that you don't know.
|
| I can count 3 mistakes here:
|
| 1- The client isn't the only thing that matters (There's
| servers)
|
| 2- The client doesn't follow a spec in WhatsApp, there is no
| spec as it's a private non-interoperable system.
|
| 3- Browsers and HTTPS work with an entirely different
| encryption model, TLS is asymmetric, certificate based and
| domain based. TLS may be used in Whatsapp to some extent, but
| it's not the main encryption tool.
| snowmobile wrote:
| Wrong, wrong and wrong. If an app does real E2EE (not
| "marketing E2EE"), then the servers should have no control
| over the encryption. Otherwise it's not end-to-end, by
| definition. Regarding the "private non-interoperable
| system", the whole point of TFA is that EU made them open
| it up. See
| https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-
| mess... Your last "point" is irrelevant because I never
| claimed anything about the similarity between encryption
| models. Have you ever heard of a "simile"?
| palata wrote:
| The only thing that matter is whether you trust the app or
| not.
|
| - If it is proprietary, you just have to blindly trust it (as
| is the case with WhatsApp currently: they say it is end-to-
| end encrypted, but you can't verify).
|
| - If it is open source, then some people will want to
| understand how it works before they trust it. Other will
| either blindly trust (like for proprietary software) or trust
| that persons they trust understood how it works and were
| convinced.
|
| > You might as well ask, how does $browser work with HTTPS?
|
| Well, exactly. I am interested in how the WhatsApp interop
| works just as I am interested in how HTTPS works.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Well, yes. But one could think of a world in which WhatsApp
| has its own internal protocol and to bolt on third-party
| support they just decide to represent third party clients as
| "virtual clients" on the server side, which would be the
| easiest way to make it work while not having E2EE support.
| Especially since the feature only exists for legal compliance
| purposes.
|
| (This is not the case, apparently.)
| palata wrote:
| They explained it to some extent here:
| https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-mess...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is app/company from Latvia, as I understand.
| brabel wrote:
| Don't they have a desktop app? The WhatsApp desktop app is heavy
| and annoying. Would love to use something else.
| oblio wrote:
| Just use the web version.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| The desktop version is the web version now
| oblio wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand this.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| The desktop version is electron now (or soon)
| poisonborz wrote:
| Even the first announcement about this included BirdyChat and
| Haiket. Two completely unknown and yet unreleased closed source
| chat apps with a waitlist.
|
| Can't help but think they are maintained by people close to Meta
| dev teams and were hand-picked for a malicious compliance, where
| they can just point to them as examples, and they make onboarding
| as complicated and expensive as possible for others.
| input_sh wrote:
| Correct! This is just Meta doing malicious compliance by being
| "compatible" with companies with no actual product, three-
| months old waitlist, no actual users within the EU, and nobody
| to push back on WhatsApp's definition of interoperability. Then
| when some real product tries to actually become interoperable
| down-the-line, Meta's gonna be like "well these two did it just
| fine according to this backwards implementation, why can't
| you?"
|
| They're both b2b products that are gonna try to find their
| first users by pitching the idea that you can use their
| products to spam WhatsApp users.
|
| Haiket doesn't even _try_ to hide its connection to Meta. All
| you have to do is to go to their website, click on press, and
| see in the only press release they 've ever posted that its CEO
| holds patents in use by Meta. Here, let me save you a click:
| https://haiket.com/press/release-nov11.html
|
| > Alex holds over 10 patents in voice and communication
| technologies, assigned to and used by Google and Facebook.
| kubb wrote:
| I see a second round of legislation might be needed. They'll
| get it right eventually.
| input_sh wrote:
| Eh, there's no specific definition of interoperability
| written in the Digital Markets Act. It's decided on a case-
| by-case basis and I'm sure that the legislators in charge
| of this case will push back on this piss-poor
| implementation in like a year from now.
|
| By the time this back-and-forth reaches its end, these two
| will find some shady b2b customers and are gonna be touted
| as "successful European startups".
| Bratmon wrote:
| They never got cookie popups right. What makes you so
| confident?
| jorvi wrote:
| They got cookie pop-ups right, current rules:
|
| - the default choice needs to be "strictly necessary
| cookies
|
| - with other less prominent buttons for "allow all" and
| "deny all"
|
| - a site is not allowed to force you to have the press a
| bunch of buttons or select a bunch of things to deny
| most/all cookies
|
| The problem lies in enforcement. Unless you are a huge
| player, there is almost nil chance you're gonna get
| fined.
|
| I think about the only thing missing is that they should
| have RFC'd a standard akin to Do Not Track, except this
| would have communicated to sites if your default is
| "strictly necessary", "allow all" or"deny all". With it
| being set to "strictly necessary" by default.
| palata wrote:
| > The problem lies in enforcement. Unless you are a huge
| player, there is almost nil chance you're gonna get
| fined.
|
| I am curious: why is that difficult? Define the fine as a
| percentage of the revenue of the company, have users
| report links, and pay someone to check the link and send
| the fine.
|
| Sounds like easy money... I mean it's very profitable to
| pay people to check parking lots and fine drivers who
| don't follow the regulations. This should be even more
| profitable?
| xmcp123 wrote:
| If I am business outside Europe, why would I send Europe
| what my revenue is?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| I don't know -- why do businesses outside Europe care
| about GDPR compliance at all? They could just track
| Europeans all they want to, without any cookie banners.
| xmcp123 wrote:
| Tbh most do. It makes sense only for big companies with a
| multinational presence.
|
| But admitting you are subject to the laws of a
| country/entity is one thing, sending them your books
| (when your company is not based there) is kind of on a
| different level
| palata wrote:
| If you don't care about GDPR at all, then you don't have
| a cookie banner. So if you have the abusive cookie
| banner, I think it's fair to say that you care about
| Europe.
| kubb wrote:
| Optimistic. They've got sideloading done, browser and
| search choice done, ad transparency done, more choice for
| payments done, many dark patterns banned.
|
| The gears are turning slowly, but they're doing really
| useful work.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Also, there's a lot of hate from US commenters but don't
| forget that the US was trying to do the same when it
| still had a sane administration.
|
| The DoJ was trying to stop the Google search deal, trying
| to split them up etc. Big tech is too big and this is a
| problem everywhere.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Haiket doesn't even try to hide its connection to Meta. All
| you have to do is to go to their website, click on press, and
| see in the only press release they've ever posted that its
| CEO holds patents in use by Meta. [...] Alex holds over 10
| patents in voice and communication technologies, assigned to
| and used by Google and Facebook.
|
| How does this imply he has any connection to Meta? Companies
| license patents all the time.
| input_sh wrote:
| Okay, what about three sentences above that one?
|
| > Before Haiket, Alex founded a number of technology start-
| ups and helped develop innovative voice solutions for
| Facebook and Google.
|
| At the very least, I think it's safe to say he has _some_
| connections within Meta that he utilised for this purpose.
| He 's definitely not a complete outsider whose startup
| (with no actual product) just _happened_ to be picked by
| Meta.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > what about three sentences above that one?
|
| My bad. I searched for "Meta" instead of "Facebook."
| Quite a few other red flags in that press release.
|
| > Haiket is launching the Beta trial from today, with a
| pipeline of future innovation for early adopters,
| including a pioneering silencing technology that will
| allow users to speak privately in public, with voice
| communication that only your device can hear.
| scns wrote:
| >> including a pioneering silencing technology that will
| allow users to speak privately in public, with voice
| communication that only your device can hear.
|
| Does anyone else think this sounds beyond ridiculous?
| londons_explore wrote:
| > voice communication that only your device can hear.
|
| This is fairly straightforward - you have the device spew
| out noise with similar characteristics to human speech
| (ie. random overlapping syllables in the speaker's
| voice). Take a recording then subtract the random
| syllables.
|
| Only your device can do the subtraction, because only
| your device knows the waveform it transmitted.
|
| Obviously in a room with lots of reverb this will be a
| bit harder, since you will also need to subtract the
| reflection of what was transmitted with a room profile
| and deal with the phone moving in the room, but it sounds
| far from impossible.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Countermeasure: set up four microphones some distance
| apart, use autocorrelation to pinpoint the sound sources,
| and then isolate them, recovering the "masked" speech.
| The countercountermeasure would be to fully surround your
| mouth and vocal tract with an active noise cancelling
| system and _then_ produce noise (to push whatever little
| sound gets through _far_ below the noise floor: the
| signal is unpredictable enough that you can 't use
| averaging techniques to recover it). The
| countercountercountermeasure would be to use a camera in
| the radio band to look at the vocal tract directly, using
| the phone as a light source, and recover the phonemes
| that way. The countercountercountercountermeasure would
| be to construct an isolated box... at which point you're
| no longer having a voice call in public: you have a
| portable privacy booth.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > you have the device spew out noise with similar
| characteristics to human speech
|
| Surely this only works if you're using the phone as a
| speakerphone (and are therefore almost certainly being an
| arsehole in public[0])?
|
| [0] Because if it was an actual speakerphone situation,
| hiding your voice would be stupid.
| blell wrote:
| Any company can ask for interoperatibility with whatsapp. None
| of them are, because it's obviously against their interests.
|
| The DMA will change nothing in this regard because the "many
| apps" approach is the most beneficial to users.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > because it's obviously against their interests.
|
| Why? I'd love to be an alternative whatsapp client with all
| kinds of new features that the official client doesn't have.
| Obviously you say you're building a compatible chat network,
| but the reality is users are just using your client to talk
| to whatsapp users.
|
| Eg. one feature I'd love is some AI to automatically take any
| date and time someone mentions to me and put it as a draft
| event in my calendar. I miss so many events from big group
| chats I'm not paying proper attention to and suddenly
| everyone is saying "Whoa, you didn't come to Johns 50th
| birthday?!? Why not? We invited you months ago[in a group
| chat with 100 messages a day of mostly memes]"
| poisonborz wrote:
| > obviously against their interests
|
| Would love to know how it is "obviously" against my interest
| to make a chat app and have 3.3 billion users adressable
| instantly. Bad for internet health to be still tied to Meta,
| sure, but the damage was done and this is a way to reverse
| it.
| blell wrote:
| Why would you spend a lot of money to make a better app for
| whatsapp and let them keep all the revenue?
|
| You won't get enough people to pay you money to use your
| app to make it profitable. If you think you will, then you
| have a business already; go build it!
| poisonborz wrote:
| > keep all the revenue
|
| Which revenue? Whatsapp is for free, those 3.3 billion
| people use it for free, the revenue is the reselling of
| user data and showing them ads. Which they would do less
| with a 3rd party client, and as such Meta fights it tooth
| and nail.
|
| > You won't get enough people to pay you money to use
| your app
|
| It might surprise you but people build apps just for fun,
| free and open source for others to use, just to make the
| world better. Which really would be in this case, that's
| also the intention of this law.
| nottorp wrote:
| Well they lost me at waitlist.
| m00dy wrote:
| I can vibecode this in an hour.
| jakkos wrote:
| My new favorite breed of commenters are AI bros who go around
| lamenting how trivial other peoples' work is, while they
| themselves fail to create anything that anyone else actually
| wants to use
| nottorp wrote:
| Based on other comments it is bad enough to be vibe coded :)
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| You could have vibecoded a better comment too. But you didn't.
| rambambram wrote:
| As a European, I would like to know in _which_ European country
| you're based. I think I know all of them, people from abroad
| might not. Saying "Made in Europe" is too general for my European
| liking. ;)
| arter45 wrote:
| https://www.birdy.chat/terms says Latvia
| kykat wrote:
| The company of the website appears to be based in Riga, Latvia
| https://company.lursoft.lv/en/fyello-productivity/4020345542...
| altern8 wrote:
| I thought the same thing.
|
| I also don't think there's such a thing as "made in Europe", as
| if it was "made in USA". Is it made in Germany, Italy,
| Albania..?
| ncruces wrote:
| Plenty of supermarket products say made in Europe,
| particularly (but not only) white label products.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The words aren't important. The regulated meaning is. Does
| it have a legal meaning? If so, what is it? Who enforces
| it? Consider made in Italy vs made in Germany are different
| in meaningful aspects.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| _Is there_ even a regulated meaning to "made in X"?
|
| The way I see it, "made in Europe" may be dubious, but
| "made in EU" should be just as okay to write as "made in
| USA". And if it's not a thing, well, nothing is a thing
| until people make it a thing.
|
| EDIT: also we're talking about a software product here,
| where most things written on the product is legally
| meaningless - otherwise we'd have special customs regimes
| for those major software exporter places like "love" and
| "".
| dfxm12 wrote:
| As my comment implied, there is in some places, but the
| regulations aren't uniform. Also, the person I responded
| to mentioned _supermarket products_. I was asking
| legitimate questions & was hoping to get an informed
| response.
| altern8 wrote:
| I know that there is a regulated meaning--at least for
| food--even down to the region (Scotch, Chianti,
| Champagne, etc.) or even city (Modena, for balsamic
| vinegar), but laws aren't the same in every country.
|
| "Made in EU" would be equivalent to "Made in USA", and
| I'm pretty sure it's regulated.
|
| This is just an app though, so they can say whatever they
| want. I've seen "Made with love", "Made on Earth", etc.
| altern8 wrote:
| Maybe "made in the EU"..? That is not the same thing as
| "made in Europe".
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Surely it's very similar, companies can't - AFAIK - be
| registered in USA, they're registered in a state. USA's
| States have different tax and legislative climates, just like
| EU states do.
| altern8 wrote:
| Sure, but the U.S. are a single country, while Europe is
| many different countries that are completely different.
|
| I'm in Poland and can drive 2 hours and stop understanding
| what people are saying to me (in German and Czech).
|
| That was my point.
| bojan wrote:
| > while Europe is many different countries that are
| completely different.
|
| I've always found this a weird take. European (EU)
| countries are more similar to each other than any country
| outside of Europe is to any European country.
|
| In your example, if you drive two hours to Germany or
| Czechia, your car will still be insured, all your bank
| cards will still work, the price of your mobile phone
| service stays the same, you'll have a good idea how
| health and employment systems work, and the chances are
| you'll be able to talk to people in English.
|
| It remains true that the barriers the businesses face are
| higher, but that's not what your example was about.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > I've always found this a weird take. European (EU)
| countries are more similar to each other than any country
| outside of Europe is to any European country.
|
| You think finland and malta are more similar to each
| other than sweden and norway?
| palata wrote:
| It's not. Part of Russia is in Europe. The geographical
| limit between Europe and Asia is not well defined.
|
| I think it would be similar to saying "First American chat
| app that...", which would be ambiguous?
| rippeltippel wrote:
| It Is fair to say that "Europe" is a proxy for "European
| Union", like "America" is usually understood as "United
| States of America", without any precise geographic
| connotation.
|
| Their service operates in the European Economic Area,
| which includes more countries than the EU and is
| therefore closer to the European geographic surface.
| palata wrote:
| I think that "America" actually means "the USA".
| "American", on the other hand...
| LelouBil wrote:
| There is actually a "European company" structure.
|
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-
| business/devel...
|
| Most notably, Airbus is an "European company".
| retired wrote:
| Could even be Turkey west of the Bosphorus.
|
| They can fabricate the product in Bursa and do final assembly
| in West-Istanbul.
| palata wrote:
| Or Russia...
| altern8 wrote:
| Correct, Russia is in both Europe and Asia.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I'd also like to know what "based in the EEA" means:
|
| > For interoperability to work, both you and your WhatsApp
| contacts need to be based in the EEA.
|
| Does my contact phone number need to have an EEA country code?
| Does my current IP address need to be geolocated in the EEA? Do
| I need to download the two apps from a regional App Store in
| the EEA? Do I need to show an EEA payment method to both apps?
| What happens to my chats if I move or switch app stores?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| EEA = European Economic Area. It includes a few other
| countries such as Switzerland, Norway and about two more
| which I forgot.
| timeon wrote:
| Reminds me eurosky.social they have on page:
|
| "For Europe, this is our chance to build competitive
| alternatives to Big Tech. But we need European-hosted
| infrastructure to make that possibility a reality."
|
| Page is hosted in USA.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| I won't understand why people do that when Hetzner is so
| effective.
| usr1106 wrote:
| I agree, made in Europe, does not give enogh information. Their
| T&C gives the details: They are from Latvia.
|
| I dare to claim: A majority of EU citizens know really nothing
| about Latvia.
| redleader55 wrote:
| As an European, you shouldn't discriminate based on country of
| origin within Europe.
| rambambram wrote:
| You're using the word "discriminate" in bad faith, don't do
| that. Not every made distinction is discrimination.
| t00 wrote:
| Closed, iOS only, invite only. Thanks.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up. You saved me some frustration and
| disappointment.
| morphle wrote:
| Warning! Badly broken user interface, I wouldn't trust these
| programmers to get the end-to-end encryption right.
|
| On the second screen of the app there is already an infuriating
| bug: they ask to give your work email because than you go hire in
| priority on their invite-only waiting list. So you type in your
| email again and again and again, alternating between all your
| emails, but you keep returning to the form asking for your work
| email. You check those emails to see if they send you something
| to activate your account but nothing. Exasperated you try the
| only other button, sign up with private email instead. Guess that
| works, because you leave the infinite loop. But than zilch, nada,
| nothing.
|
| Don't these script-kiddies use their own app?
| aduwah wrote:
| I was a big fan of pidgin, but this premise makes me feel iffy.
|
| Why would I ever want my work to intrude on my personal
| messaging? My private time is my own. Slack/Teams is perfect
| because I can mute it on a schedule when I stop for the day.
|
| Anything that is urgent can be managed via Pagerduty or similar
| on a controlled fashion
| maqp wrote:
| The unfortunate problem with Pidgin is you don't have proper
| cross-platform E2EE chats, especially for groups. OTR is
| terribly outdated with its 1536-bit FFDH. These days the
| security margin sits at 2048-bit minimum, 3072-bit recommended.
| OMEMO might work but it's just not a standard. Good thing
| Signal made the whole thing just work.
| Bender wrote:
| Surely there must be someone capable of and willing to update
| OTR to support the latest PQC encryption protocols and
| ciphers. OTR is the only semi-trustable model of E2EE I have
| ever seen. Anything managed by the same platform managing the
| communication is dead in the water for me.
| maqp wrote:
| The OTRv4 project is apparently dead. The last commit from
| Celi was four years ago https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4
| Bender wrote:
| All the more reason to fork.
| altern8 wrote:
| I loved Pigdin! The UI and brand was so good, too, for Linux
| back in the day...
| scroy wrote:
| Just as good on Windows, honestly. I miss that little bird.
| rw_grim wrote:
| You all know that we're still around and have been working
| on the next major release for quite a while now right?
|
| You might be interested in our state of the bird posts...
| https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird
| scroy wrote:
| Nice. I think I left around the time gchat dropped XMPP
| support. Is google chat supported to any extent these
| days?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > this premise makes me feel iffy. Why would I ever want my
| work to intrude on my personal messaging?
|
| I think the pitch here is exactly the opposite of that? Many
| businesses in the EU already use WhatsApp for customer contact
| - this lets you separate your business communications from the
| app you use for personal messaging
| thwg wrote:
| When a smaller network tries to be interoperable with a larger
| network, the larger network almost always eats up the smaller
| one. This is how XMPP was killed by Gtalk, if any of you are old
| enough to remember.
| oblio wrote:
| Gtalk did not kill XMPP. Very few people were using XMPP before
| Gtalk, most people were using AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger
| and other proprietary protocols. Gtalk supported XMPP to gain
| traction as a more open messenger and possibly because they
| implemented the original version on top of XMPP to get it out
| the door faster.
|
| Gtalk did pull the plug on XMPP but that didn't really change
| much.
|
| I don't remember EVER interacting with someone with their own
| XMPP server. Gtalk had nothing to kill.
| B1FIDO wrote:
| Jabber was big with the "federated, decentralized" crowd. I
| recall several colleagues who established Jabber addresses
| and advertised them, sometimes as their only IM address.
|
| XMPP was more than Gtalk, but I think that Gtalk was the
| "death knell" for XMPP, having absorbed it and sort of
| claimed it as their own. Anyone who would've used federated
| Jabber addresses in those days is using Mastodon now.
| oblio wrote:
| > Jabber was big with the "federated, decentralized" crowd.
|
| Yeah, just like today, all 4 of them.
|
| Gtalk put XMPP briefly in the spotlight, but for the
| masses, XMPP never really lived. It was a niche protocol
| with very niche usage. Just like Mastodon today.
| vpShane wrote:
| This means nothing good, Meta and its products are a privacy
| nightmare, with WhatsApp having major market share outside of the
| U.S.
|
| People need signal. It's not perfect, but it's the best
| available.
|
| No source code, wait list, special compatibility with a for-
| profit ad based company. No thanks.
| fragmede wrote:
| and people using it. That may not matter much to you, but
| that's usually what people what from their chat app.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Signal _still_ doesn 't allow you to backup/export chat history
| on iOS into an open format? I think now they have some bullshit
| proprietary paid cloud storage solution (why not let me use the
| cloud I already pay for?), but for years they haven't had any
| solution for iOS at all.
|
| Last time I had to reinstall my phone I ended up having to use
| & fix some Github project that simulated Signal's transfer
| protocol to simulate a target device to export my data.
|
| I then deleted Signal and migrated to iMessage/WhatsApp and
| called it a day.
| B-Con wrote:
| Any time an app has bizarre functionality gap on iOS, I
| assume it's because of Apple's anti-consumer bullshit app
| restrictions.
|
| No idea if that's actually what's going on, but Apple thinks
| of their devices as appliances and hates when apps offer pro-
| customer features.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| No. The Signal developers opted out of iOS's backup and
| export features.
| fph wrote:
| I have no idea why, but I would bet it's because it was
| sending stuff to Apple unencrypted.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's because Signal has some unhealthy obsession with
| "security" and does not want to recipient of the
| communication to ever be able to export messages in plain
| text.
| jolmg wrote:
| > Signal still doesn't allow you to backup/export chat
| history on iOS into an open format?
|
| > I then deleted Signal and migrated to iMessage/WhatsApp and
| called it a day.
|
| That doesn't fix anything, does it?
|
| Last time I tried to export a years-long WhatsApp chat, I was
| only able to export a few-weeks-worth, IIRC. WhatsApp chat
| exports also don't include media. It's just a txt file. The
| backup is limited to using Google and it's done in such a way
| that you're not allowed to download it yourself.
|
| The only way to export the chat was to use the web client and
| scroll all the way to the top, then copy-paste the HTML out
| of web-inspector once everything loaded. I don't think that's
| possible anymore. IIRC, the web client now tops at some point
| with a message like "use the Android app to look further
| back".
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > That doesn't fix anything, does it?
|
| But moving to Signal doesn't either. You're moving from one
| walled garden to another. If you're going to burn the
| resources and "political points" encouraging people to move
| it's better be worth it - right now for the casual user
| Signal is _worse_ than WhatsApp or even Telegram.
| digiown wrote:
| Signal doesn't allow you to do that on any platform. The only
| way I know of to get the data out is via some random github
| project to extract operate on the encrypted backup from
| android: https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools
| p1anecrazy wrote:
| Just use Telegram, at least it's not U.S. made
| maqp wrote:
| * Not end-to-end encrypted by default.
|
| * No end-to-end encryption for groups.
|
| * No end-to-end encryption for desktop meaning normal use
| when working on computer requires you and your friends to
| constantly whip out phone to send 1:1 secret chats. Nobody
| wants to do that so they revert to non-E2EE chats.
|
| * Terrible track record with end-to-end encryption deployment
| from AES-IGE to IND-CCA vulnerabilities
|
| * CEO pretends to be exiled from Russia but in secretly
| visits Russia over SIXTY times in 10 years
| https://kyivindependent.com/kremlingram-investigation-durov/
|
| * Zero metadata protection from server
|
| * Open source, but it's meaningless as it only confirms the
| client doesn't protect content or metadata from the server.
| palata wrote:
| I think Signal is a better alternative, even though it's US
| made. It's open source.
| ivm wrote:
| Signal's UX is years behind even modern WhatsApp, let alone
| Telegram, which is closer to a blogging or social platform. We
| can't expect mass adoption of such a clunky app simply because
| it's more private - it has never worked that way.
| palata wrote:
| Maybe I'm old, but there is nothing I use in WhatsApp that
| does not exist in Signal. What are you missing there?
| ivm wrote:
| Various group features like communities and group voice
| chats, public channels, voice message transcription, only
| three sticker packs and no obvious way to add my own,
| backup is _still_ marked as beta in 2026, no business
| features while _all_ business here use WhatsApp in one way
| or another...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't use any of the other features (in fact, I
| actively avoid them and would disable them if they ever
| came to Signal), but:
|
| > only three sticker packs and no obvious way to add my
| own
|
| https://support.signal.org/hc/en-
| us/articles/360031836512-St...
|
| > backup is still marked as beta
|
| Also, local backups haven't been beta for ages. The free
| cloud backups are the ones that are new.
| ivm wrote:
| But we're talking about mass adoption, not Hacker News
| users' preferences. Signal simply doesn't offer anything
| attractive to most people.
|
| As someone who spends a dozen hours on WhatsApp and
| Telegram each week, I don't see any real benefits either.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Signal offers a chat app that works fine and is not owned
| by Meta. That's enough for a significant amount of people
| to switch already. I'd love some quality of life updates
| to some of the niche features, like the desktop app, but
| the mobile app does everything it needs to do.
|
| Community chats aren't what keep people on WhatsApp, the
| network effect does.
| ivm wrote:
| Yeah, and to overcome the network effect, you need
| something compelling enough to justify the effort in the
| first place. I have hundreds of local contacts on
| WhatsApp, many of whom have joined Telegram on their own
| because of its benefits (for example, a local firefighter
| feed is shared through a channel there). But I only have
| about 20 contacts on Signal, even IT guys aren't there.
| It simply doesn't offer anything appealing to at least
| 95% of the people around me.
| maqp wrote:
| >joined Telegram on their own because of its benefits
|
| Sorry, social media masquerading as a secure messaging
| app isn't a secure messaging app.
| ivm wrote:
| I bet nobody joins Telegram because of its perceived
| security, it's a content platform.
| maqp wrote:
| Yup, yet for some reason we see Telegram always pushed on
| secure messaging app chats, up until the point when
| someone points out it's not secure at all like it tries
| to advertise it self. Then it's always about the fun
| features it has, even if it's acting against the user's
| best interest, which is the definition of Trojan horse
| malware .
|
| Also, there's a LOT of people who have joined Telegram
| because of its perceived security. The company has been
| extremely vocal about WhatsApp being horrible despite it
| having always-on E2EE, when in TG it's practically always
| off.
| wtetzner wrote:
| For most people quality of life stuff will probably rank
| higher than "not owned by Meta". I wouldn't be surprised
| if a large percentage of WhatsApp users don't even know
| (or care) it's owned by Meta.
| UserMark wrote:
| I've been beta testing https://www.joinmorse.com lately it's
| in very early stages, but it's promising (if you don't care
| about the "social" features).
| nottorp wrote:
| Doesn't this signal thing require a phone number?
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Hope the new Whatsapp interface won't be abused for spam . As
| Whatsapp already has spam issues . Will it run through meta's
| anti-spam filtering ?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > As Whatsapp already has spam issues
|
| Want to elaborate a little? I think I got only one spammy
| WhatsApp message in the last who knows how many years it was
| made available (I remember the time when I had to pay to use it
| on the iPhone). I get more SMS spam nowadays.
| colinprince wrote:
| This five-month-old comment suggests that birdychat uses
| telegram, pivot maybe?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736050
| nunobrito wrote:
| Or likely combinining both. Good catch.
| my_throwaway23 wrote:
| While not a commercial offering, which is what this is saying in
| reality - closed source, commercial alternative with (limited)
| interoperability, I've been running my own chat server for a
| while now with (limited) interoperability with both Whatsapp and
| Messenger.
|
| I suspect a good number of people here don't care for any of this
| - FOSS, chat, _voice_ , and _video_ is where it 's at.
| Interoperability for those last two don't exist yet AFAIK, and
| they're truly game-changers. Will that change? Does the DMA
| mention anything other than chat? Perhaps someone could enlighten
| me.
| thebiblelover7 wrote:
| How have you been running it? How did you make it
| interoperable?
| my_throwaway23 wrote:
| I'm using Element Synapse with the Mautrix bridges. They're
| all a pain to setup, with a ton of required configuration
| options each, but once setup, it's mostly transparent where
| any one chat originates. Reactions, emojis, media, it all
| just works.
|
| The downside, of course, is that voice and video will not
| work.
|
| Oh, and perhaps a ton of initial invitations, one for every
| conversation you have open.
|
| There are open servers you can join, with the bridges
| enabled, but of course, that kind of defeats the purpose. At
| that point you might as well use a commercial, closed-source
| offering, as, ironically, a corporation with a large
| footprint you can sue. Average Joe with an AWS instance you
| might not be able to track down, should your data leak.
|
| https://github.com/element-hq/synapse
|
| https://github.com/mautrix/meta
| zufallsheld wrote:
| With this project (https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-
| docker-ansible-deploy/), setting up the bridges gets a lot
| easier. After the initial setup, upgrading the bridges is
| painless.
| DanOpcode wrote:
| Would be interesting to hear how it works what you have built.
|
| Edit: Saw your other comment now.
| my_throwaway23 wrote:
| Frankly I didn't "build" anything. It was mostly just a case
| of setting up the docker scripts, make sure the volumes have
| proper permissions and the configuration is sane. The
| configuration though, I'll take all the credit in the world
| for wading through, haha. These are not software with
| opinions included.
| jeena wrote:
| My Main Problem is To keep the bridges up to date. I just
| switched my phone number in WhatsApp and Signal and that
| lead to a huge ton of trouble for my bridges. After a month
| of fiddling with it, deleting things, updating, logging in
| and out of accounts and puppets, I still don't get any
| messages from signal into element. While it was working for
| years just fine it gives me the most trouble now that my
| dad is in the hospital in another country and I have to
| coordinate with my siblings a lot.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes but element/matrix aren't going to work with WhatsApp on
| offering compatibility. They have reasons for that, most of
| them good ones but I doubt that video is coming.
| AgharaShyam wrote:
| This is really amazing. I hope some regulation like DMA comes to
| India as well.
|
| Does WhatsApp charge money for this? If not, why would a business
| use their API? They could simply create an app to directly talk
| to their customers, or am I missing something?
| yigalirani wrote:
| Would that work outside europe?
| bni wrote:
| Does this mandate allow me to use a. 3rd party Teams, Google Chat
| and Slack client?
|
| I suspect the answer is no, but why?
| benoau wrote:
| They are not designated gatekeepers. It is unfortunate because
| interoperability should be its own objective for its own sake.
| aniviacat wrote:
| Because they're not big enough to be considered a "gatekeeper".
| usr1106 wrote:
| There are criteria for how dominant a platform is to be
| considered gatekeeper. Teams, Google and Slack have much
| smaller market share for private messaging, so I guess they are
| not affected. Don't remember the criteria by heart.
| shevy-java wrote:
| That name isn't that great ...
|
| WhatsApp is not a great name either, but catchy and somewhat
| simple.
|
| BirdyPo.. I mean BirdyChat sounds like when doves cry. But not as
| catchy.
|
| Also, I am all in favour of Europeans becoming less dependent on
| the USA (yet-another-ICE-killing incident today, with video
| footage contradicting the claims made by the current government -
| again), but there is kind of ... a weak decision-making process
| here. Lobbyists sell to Europeans that Amazon data servers in
| Europe, now comply with european laws. Well, those are still
| external companies that will hand over data from europeans, so
| that is not a solution. Why do some media try to insinuate
| otherwise? Who owns and controls all these media?
| u8080 wrote:
| >still external companies that will hand over data from
| europeans
|
| The idea here is that EU three letter agencies also have access
| to your data
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I'd rather have my data accessed by eu agencies than USA
| ones. Seeing how this country is turning more and more into a
| fascist oligarchy.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Right-wing populist parties are very popular in Europe,
| including in France and Germany, the two most important EU
| countries. There is a significant possibility that people
| with Trump-like ideologies will come to power there before
| too long.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Trump is so incompetent he has killed any chance for far
| right politicians to be elected for the next decades. And
| even them hate him now due to Greenland.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I really don't think the first part of that is true. All
| significant recent polls in Germany have AfD at around
| 25% of vote intentions, which would probably give them
| the biggest fraction in the Bundestag, or second behind
| the CDU/CSU (but very close).
| SahAssar wrote:
| Right, but trump is in power in the US now.
| u8080 wrote:
| If you let your govt abuse your rights, you will end in the
| same spot.
| amelius wrote:
| Birdy has this Twittery sound to it.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Who owns and controls all these media?
|
| Never attribute to a cabal what can be adequately described by
| Gell-Mann-Amnesia.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > yet-another-ICE-killing incident today
|
| Man with a gun approaches law enforcement during an operation.
| What do you think was going to happen? They would give him
| flowers?
|
| How about you try the same thing with the police during a stop
| or a chase and see if the results are different.
|
| This is really not the place for biased political discourse
| that has nothing to do with the topic of the conversation.
| jordemort wrote:
| I'm pretty resentful that people in the US are stuck using
| worse/less featureful versions of products from US companies,
| while the government in Europe can get these kinds of concessions
| for their people. If a company is legally obligated to offer a
| feature to people in other parts of the world, they should be
| forced to offer it at back home in the US as well, since we can't
| be bothered otherwise to pass any of these nice laws for
| ourselves. See also: choice in app stores
| latexr wrote:
| Sometimes it happens.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
| wswin wrote:
| Let's not pretend they would do this if the tech monopolies
| were european.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yes, the EU would never dare to regulate European companies,
| for example require banks to offer free and instant person-
| to-person money transfers or mobile phone operators to offer
| data roaming at domestic rates.
| seec wrote:
| The only reason we have that is because fintech is eating
| the meal of traditional banks. They came up with ways to
| transfer with just a card (which benefits Visa and
| Mastercard, US companies) and do inter-account instant
| transfers for free.
|
| SEPA normalization took forever, and even now instant
| transfers are still very often paid past the limit in your
| card bundle (probably around 3 if you don't have an
| expensive card).
|
| Brussels rarely works for the little people; they just
| support whatever the big players at the moment want, unless
| they are foreign and can come up with a reason to tax them.
|
| It is delusional to think politicians in Brussels care
| about the little guys; it is always about maintaining or
| gaining power, otherwise they wouldn't come up with absurd
| regulations that hit the small players much harder than any
| of the big ones.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| SEPA was a pain for us citizens anyway because now we
| have to use huge long account numbers even locally within
| the same country. I never understood why that had to be
| the case, just leave that for international transfers.
| cromka wrote:
| Let's not pretend you ever bothered to check if that's
| actually true
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| That's because your government aligns itself with businesses,
| not consumers.
|
| > If a company is legally obligated to offer a feature to
| people in other parts of the world, they should be forced to
| offer it at back home in the US as well
|
| This is a pretty typical self -entitled attitude that Americans
| have. You chose your government, not the rest of the world.
| mlrtime wrote:
| And you don't have to use any of it, feel free to stop
| tomorrow.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| > If a company is legally obligated to offer a feature to
| people in other parts of the world, they should be forced to
| offer it at back home in the US as well
|
| The obvious implication of the above statement is that the US
| government should force the company to do this.
|
| >This is a pretty typical self -entitled attitude that
| Americans have.
|
| When Americans ask their government for the exact same thing
| that Europeans asked their government for, suddenly Europeans
| think Americans are "entitled". There's no content to your
| ideology beyond just "America Bad".
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| No, their statement was 'if another country gets it, I
| should get it too'. That's not the same as 'I long for the
| privacy benefits offered to Europeans and actively write to
| my government representatives to request it'. It's more
| like expecting a privilege your parents gave your sibling
| just because they got it as a result of doing well in
| school while your grades were so-so.
|
| At let's not forget, most of the egregious privacy
| violations like faang and adtech come from American
| companies.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| "X should do Y" is common phrasing Americans use to talk
| about US public policy.
|
| >It's more like expecting a privilege your parents gave
| your sibling just because they got it as a result of
| doing well in school while your grades were so-so.
|
| It was once believed that privacy is a right that all
| humans share, and should be advanced for everyone. Modern
| scholars understand that this view is mistaken. Privacy
| is a _privilege_ (your word, not mine!) that Europeans
| earned through their refined culture and discernment. Us
| Americans will need to catch up in terms of ancient
| ruins, cheese, and multilingualism in order to earn the
| the same _privilege_ that Europe has by birthright =)
|
| >At let's not forget, most of the egregious privacy
| violations like faang and adtech come from American
| companies.
|
| Was this statement intended to disprove my claim that
| 'There's no content to your ideology beyond just "America
| Bad".'?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| America has eroded and treated privacy not as a right,
| not as a privilege, but as nothing. It has been doing
| this more and more blatantly across the world for the
| past 2 years and has now become an authoritarian state,
| threatening war across the globe while simultaneously
| destabilising the global economy. America IS bad, for
| multiple reasons.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| So why are you so angry at jordemort trying to push back?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Because their comment was self entitled and America bad.
| qubex wrote:
| It can go both ways: for example in the EU Apple disallows
| mirroring of iPhones on Macs because of its interpretation of
| EU statutes, though it occurred at the same time as they were
| required to support third-party app stores, so I strongly
| suspect it was a bit of 'FU' to the EU.
|
| But yeah broadly speaking I'm very content about the greater
| legal protections this continent affords. (And it only works
| because the EU makes rules for such a large and valuable
| market, why is why breaking away a la Brexit amounts to such a
| loss of leverage: you have to reach consensus, but you also
| become a behemoth. Useful tradeoff.)
| direwolf20 wrote:
| And Apple does this while also ignoring the rule about third-
| party app stores -- they are not supported.
| altern8 wrote:
| What is "the government in Europe"..?
| fL0per wrote:
| The bodies in charge of the EU governance, probably. https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_U...
|
| Commision [executive], Council (of Ministers/of the EU)
| [legislative] and Parliament [legislative] are the three most
| significant in terms of doing/looking like what any sovereign
| country government would.
| altern8 wrote:
| Not sure, Europe isn't a country.
|
| There's the EU, but members of the EU have their own
| governments.
|
| I can't figure out why people keep getting confused. Turkey
| and Russia are in Europe, but not in the EU, for instance.
| stasomatic wrote:
| Surely you are aware that WhatsApp is a product of a tiny US
| co. Meta? Funny how the world sans the US is so in love with
| it. Shouldn't the EU be out on the streets boycotting it?
| drnick1 wrote:
| It would have been more effective to require Meta (and all other
| messaging companies) to implement an open protocol or open source
| theirs, so that people can freely write alternative clients free
| of malware.
| didip wrote:
| The sky might as well rains toads before this happens.
| reedciccio wrote:
| Doesn't Whatsapp already use an open source protocol?
| https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
| drnick1 wrote:
| AFAIK it's Signal with proprietary extensions, so it's
| effectively closed.
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| A custom API is the only way for a platform to extend its
| native E2EE sessions and features to other platforms. Making
| those APIs completely open would become a major spam problem,
| which would likely end them up in the same situation as SMTP,
| where small servers are blocked-by-default by big providers.
|
| Interoperability by agreement between legitimate messaging
| services, using custom APIs is the only realistic and secure
| way to accomplish this.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| But WhatsApp is already completely open for spammers. They
| can use the secret API or screen-scrape WhatsApp itself.
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| WhatsApp bans spam pretty quickly. Unfiltered spam is much,
| much worse.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| No, this is BS. Why? You want users for your chat app? Go get
| them the old fashioned way, not by anti US companies
| legislation.
| amelius wrote:
| When can I send messages from a PC running Python?
| vachina wrote:
| You can just that a working script is run by crooks (and is not
| public)
| charcircuit wrote:
| WhatsApp has an official API you can use already.
|
| https://pypi.org/project/whatsapp-python/
| GranPC wrote:
| That is not official, unmaintained since November 2024, and
| only applicable for the business API. It wouldn't allow
| someone to create a WhatsApp client for a non-Android/iOS
| platform.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >It wouldn't allow someone to create a WhatsApp client for
| a non-Android/iOS platform.
|
| This is moving the goal posts.
| amelius wrote:
| The goal post was moved already because I said "when can
| I send messages" and not "when can my business send
| messages". Anyway, thanks for the link.
| amelius wrote:
| Looks like it is an API for the WhatsApp Business Platform.
|
| (So not free, not for consumers)
|
| https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-
| messa...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Hopefully - never ever ever ever ever.
|
| I do not want spam.
|
| This is why iMessage is much better than SMS - there is an
| implicit cost to send. This is why there is 100x (my
| experience) iMessage spam than SMS spam. Easy to send messages
| -> spam
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > better than SMS - there is an implicit cost to send
|
| Funnily enough, people being charged per SMS but being
| allowed to send as much messages as they need on apps like
| WhatsApp is exactly why SMS/MMS is barely used on a large
| scale outside of North America.
|
| I rarely receive any spam on my phone.
| WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal do have the occasional obvious bot,
| but all apps make it trivial to block and get rid of any of
| them.
| circuit10 wrote:
| It's already possible to make WhatsApp bots, if the API was
| official they could moderate it better if anything so I don't
| see how it would help with spam
| direwolf20 wrote:
| All phone and internet services in the EU are connected to
| your personal identity document, similar to China. If you
| send spam, the police come to your house.
| velocity3230 wrote:
| In a roundabout way, you can.
|
| Today, I could write a Python script to connect to my Matrix
| Synapse server and send a message to rooms bridged to WhatsApp
| via the `mautrix-whatsapp` bridge.
| greentea23 wrote:
| Despite the opt in limitation, I wonder if this interop
| capability will allow a bridge that doesn't require you to
| install whatsapp apk on a real device (unfortunately signal
| has the same problem). I fortunately kept an old android
| whose sole purpose is to keep these 2 apps installed. Not
| ideal, but works well.
|
| Even better if we could ditch the phone number requirement.
| Many have said to me things like "I use whatsapp not SMS
| because I am not American", but of course everyone on
| WhatsApp uses SMS. To stay logged into WhatsApp you
| necessessarily must have an SMS enabled non-VOIP phone number
| that you are regularly paying a telecom provider for to
| receive auth codes.
| sahiljagtapyc wrote:
| damnn
| ksec wrote:
| I am wondering if this opens up the possibility of having more
| than two WhatsApp Number on the same phone. Especially on iOS.
|
| I have long requested this feature for Whatsapp Business, where I
| can pay an annual subscription just to have more than one number.
| So I can separate life between Business and Friends.
| augusto-moura wrote:
| I think you can do it on pure Androids that can have more than
| 1 SIM card, you need to have an Android profile for each and
| have both sim cards in the same phone.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Nexus used to support unlimited profiles for the whole phone
| including every app, Samsung phones don't.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| You can do this on many Android phones. You can have up to 5
| WhatsApp numbers on a Samsung phone.
|
| Samsung has dual messenger, so you can have 2 instances by
| default. Then you can open up a work profile and have another
| two. Then install WhatsApp in a secure folder and have another
| one (dual messenger seems blocked in secure folder so just one)
| My_Name wrote:
| Let me know when I can link it to the hundred whatsapp groups
| other people have added me to, so I can remove the stain of
| zuckerberg from as much of my life as possible.
| velocity3230 wrote:
| Install a Matrix client and run a WhatsApp bridge and you can.
|
| Is it trivial? No.
|
| Is it possible? Yes, I do it.
| zahirbmirza wrote:
| From their page
|
| "Built for better conversations Reach people with their email,
| not their phone number. Designed for focused, meaningful
| exchanges between managers, builders, and collaborators."
|
| Is it using email protocols to send messages or is it using email
| addresses as a proxy for usernames?
|
| The claim of a drive for better conversations is not really that
| accurate because better conversations rely on a more universally
| used app/system than presently exists. Ie, a replacement that
| would have to grow internationally extraordinarily quickly.
|
| Apple figured that out... iMessage was basically a cheat code to
| a vast userbase almost instantly. What Apple didn't figure,
| however, was that iMessage's green/blue thingy that went on for
| so long didn't really give android/sms users fomo, but really, it
| just created an unneeded communication barrier. Such barriers are
| the exact opposite of what is needed for a communication platform
| to be excellent. Unfortunately, decisions counter to what may be
| perceived as income generating are difficult to reverse.
|
| These sorts of apps may not be revolutionary enough I fear. I
| would love to adopt something like this, but Meta continue to
| make too many billions to let their monopoly on human
| communication management to be taken away that easily.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Never heard of this before. Why would I use this? I am assuming
| the messages are not actually encrypted, because on their own
| privacy page they state that they "process" messages and
| attachments sent through birdychat. So are they processing the
| raw unencrypted data on their servers or what?
|
| From a cursory glance of their CSAE policy, combined with the
| above, it seems they would be very eager to comply with the
| dreaded "chat control".
|
| https://www.birdy.chat/privacy
| Snoozus wrote:
| On the main page it states clearly that messages are e2e
| encrypted. So all they can collect is metadata.
| rippeltippel wrote:
| It is very possible that they process messages in the client
| app, before sending them.
|
| WhatsApp does the same: have you noticed how the photos you
| receive have a debatable quality? Presumably (and hopefully)
| the sender's app downscaled them before e2e encryption.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| From this it seems that whatsapp interop requires you to pass
| a url of the media, not the actual encrypted media. Aside
| from TLS, I'm not sure what encryption you get for
| attachments
|
| https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-
| mess...
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| You just need to enable "HD videos & photos" option in the
| WhatsApp settings and then the pictures and movies sent via
| the app have a much higher quality.
| neves wrote:
| How to use it in Brazil? I don't trust Zuck.
| B1FIDO wrote:
| You now wish to use an app that freely interoperates now with
| Meta's WhatsApp, because you don't trust the guy who owns
| WhatsApp?
|
| Trippy, dude!
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I've recently been feeling like consumers overseas get better
| treatment from tech companies than us here in the US. Unskippable
| ads are illegal in Vietnam, and now Europeans get interoperable
| messaging in WhatsApp. Meanwhile here in the US we're getting
| shafted. When are we going to put our collective feet down and
| say enough is enough?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Still, no one will adopt BirdyChat because of this.
| srikanthdotch wrote:
| The thing I hate most about WhatsApp is the number of ad messages
| from businesses. It's almost unusable for me. I have no option to
| use anything else, as all my contacts use WhatsApp and the
| network effects lock me in.
| Semaphor wrote:
| As someone who never got any of those, is that like cold spam
| messages for businesses you don't have as contacts? And can't
| you just disable messages from unknown contacts?
| Semaphor wrote:
| Looks like it's sadly mobile-only
| globular-toast wrote:
| Why would I use this closed source program instead of another
| closed source program. I don't trust some random company from
| Latvia any more than I trust Meta. We need this interop to be
| available for free software clients. I want something like
| Pidgin.
| rw_grim wrote:
| Well you can have it now...
| https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/
| vlz wrote:
| > Currently, BirdyChat supports 1:1 chats, with group chat
| interoperability coming in a future update.
|
| I wondered whether it can be used with Whatsapp groups: Apprently
| not yet.
| j1elo wrote:
| I'd like to take the opportunity to mention a tiny very useful
| app that allows opening a WhatsApp chat directly with any number,
| without having to register it first as a contact. Great for
| vacations or similar situations where a quick one-time chat is
| needed with somebody:
|
| * https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trianguloy...
|
| * Webapp: https://trianguloy.github.io/OpenInWhatsapp_Web/
|
| I'm just grateful for this app, so I thought that maybe other
| HNers might find it useful.
| tngranados wrote:
| Since some time ago, you can type the number directly in the
| search bar and it would let you message it, at least on iOS
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Same on Android.
| marcandre wrote:
| Or from any browser: https://wa.me/<phone number, just the
| digits, starting with country code>
| j1elo wrote:
| In fact that's simply what the app does. It's just a handy
| way to have it on the phone as a shortcut and not having to
| remember the details of how to do it. Although with the
| sibling comments about Whatsapp itself allowing to do all
| this, the helper app seems less useful now.
| phatfish wrote:
| Ah, this is handy, as Europe (even more than the UK somehow)
| seems to love engaging in customer service via WhatsApp. On the
| continent I end up having to use it to manage bookings for
| Hotels and restaurants. I removed my profile picture because of
| this.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Huh. Never had that here (Germany), otoh it's super common in
| South Africa
| RGBCube wrote:
| You can just paste the number into the "start new chat" search
| input and start a chat from there. You don't need any of this.
| j1elo wrote:
| :-O
|
| I didn't even suspected this was an option! I won't deny that
| I'm a bit distracted, but the UI discovery itself is also
| very poor.
| aryehof wrote:
| Only for "verified professionals"... "work email" please.
|
| Find this exclusionary and distasteful.
| aryehof wrote:
| Only for "verified professionals"... "work email" please.
|
| This isn't a general chat app alternative.
| marcocastignoli wrote:
| Data BirdyChat collects:
|
| > Messages, attachments and other materials that you send through
| BirdyChat to your contacts;
|
| No thanks
| Etheryte wrote:
| How do you think they would offer a messaging service if they
| didn't store the messages and attachments? The content has to
| live somewhere.
| pnt12 wrote:
| With ToS, we can assume that everything that is not laid down
| explicitly tends to err in favor of the company, not the
| user.
|
| "we store all messages": they store everything and ther s no
| guarantee of processing, sharing or selling that data
|
| "we store all messages encrypted end to end for sole the
| purposes of communication and can never access its contents"
| would provide many more guarantees.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| This happens a lot on HN. I remember there was a court order
| for OpenAI to release ChatGPT chat history, and many of the
| comments were simply "why are they even storing chat history
| in the first place? ridiculous" as if that isn't a core
| feature of ChatGPT.
| array_key_first wrote:
| I don't know, ask iMessage, Google messages, and, ironically,
| whatsapp.
| rbbydotdev wrote:
| USA, which prides itself on freedoms, seems to have conceded a
| great deal of them when it comes to life online. From Apple apps,
| GPDR, now this. It sucks to see what we are missing out on.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| GDPR?
| rbbydotdev wrote:
| Thank you
| yosito wrote:
| US "freedom" is more propaganda than reality, and that's
| becoming more and more apparent.
| znpy wrote:
| > WhatsApp is currently rolling out interoperability support
| across Europe.
|
| Does this mean i can chat with my whatsapp contacts without the
| whatsapp official app? I've been hating that for years.
|
| I'd love to be able to get rid of it somehow.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| This will be really happy news for both birdychat users.
|
| Ps: joking aside, this is kinda malicious compliance of WhatsApp,
| picking a chat app nobody uses.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-25 23:01 UTC)