WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
xda-developers.com
xda-developers.com
The problem is there no laws to stop whoever becomes the lucky recipient of such a network effect from doing whatever they want.
Instead antitrust law needs to be expanded to consider network effect platforms like social network as monopolies on ways of interacting with their users, and restrict them from several behaviors like this one.
Not using WhatsApp has consequences. We sometimes miss out on family events when people forget that we don't use WhatsApp. Anyone with children is basically required to use WhatsApp for communication with other parents, organising school and social events, and what have you. Refusal to do so means you ostracise your kids.
So yeah, great. To participate in some parts of society WhatsApp is now a de facto requirement. A whole nation blindly agrees to whatever terms of use Facebook drafts. And when you do accept those terms, you are forced to use their client software on one of their approved operating systems. Owning a (Android or Iphone) smartphone is a hard requirement.
The network effect means that alternatives never gain any traction, and the price of WhatsApp ('free') is hard to beat.
Same if you don't have a Facebook account. Speaking of which, WhatsApp was the defacto IM standard before it was bought by Facebook. Previously it was MSN Messenger (or whatever it is called these days. Skype?) and that was horrible as well. XMMP was at least federated, and had backwards compatibility.
The advantage WhatsApp has over MSN is that the data is E2EE.
There are some people who push for an alternative called Telegram, which uses home brew cryptography instead of established standards.
Though if I look at the Mastodon drama (recently posted on HN, apparently from 2017) federated in practice can lead to fractured communities. Heck, you can even see that in the history of IRC (how EFnet and IRCnet got started).
No, it might as well have no end-end cryptography.
The crypto is only enabled for "Secret Chats" and Calls, and I have never seen anyone actually use the secret chat functionality. Using a secret chat limits you to one device and blocks features like bots, so most people don't want to use it.
> No, it might as well have no end-end cryptography.
Parent says cryptography, not end-to-end cryptography.
Cryptography provides value even if it is not end-to-end (it limits the attack surface).
There's a lot to say about Telegram, but can please stick to the facts?
On the contrary, you have open protocol with verifiable implementation and available sources of the Telegram client for mobile platforms; yet you automatically disregard it just because it is not developed by Moxie or whatever.
I am still baffled how people completely turn off their critical thinking when it comes to encryption; I guess this is a fine example how marketing actually works well.
We don't have the WhatsApp source code, but we don't have to do a lot of reverse engineering to see that it uses this:
https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal-protocol-c
But yeah, you're right, it could be sending plaintext or deliberately leaking keys somewhere. Unless someone really reverses it we won't know it doesn't as surely as we know that Telegram doesn't use encryption at all.
Telegram uses encryption by default, just not E2EE.
You can criticise them for
- using their own crypto
- misleading advertising regarding the quality of said crypto
... and possibly more, but I still suggest we try to stick to the facts.
If just using encryption is good enough for you, then why not use Facebook Messanger, Google Hangouts or whatever they call it these days, or WeChat? You can verify their use of encryption with Wireshark.
You argue that Telegram is great because it's open source, but what difference does that really make when it's a centralized service and that centralized service has access to all the plaintext? So what if the client is open source? What does that actually help us verify in this case?
To each their own. I've made a choice that I'd rather take the risk of leaking data to Telegram (real but I've reason to belive kow risk) than leaking metadata to Facebook (a given).
I'm considering Signal though.
But don't lie and say not not encrypted when you mean not end-to-end-encrypted.
These days I am looking to rent a flat in India. It's a tough task for a bachelor here - add to that the fact that builders rarely build 1 bedroom flats.
So any broker I call simply tells me "WhatsApp me your requirement, budget, and details". When (sometimes) say "I'll SMS" the prompt response is "no no, WhatsApp". Most of them/us here don't check SMS - it's reserved for either spam or bank txn notifications and OTPs.
I'd like to delete WhatsApp, but any conversation I have in Signal vs WhatsApp is a small victory that I'll take. If at some point more than 50% of my messages are outside WA, I'll nuke it.
I'm virtually ostracized by my lack of social media engagement so my list is short, but I encouraged my girlfriend to pick it up after the more public Facebook fiascos as she was a heavy Messenger user.
As soon as she installed it, she found a good selection of her contact list was already on there, including her company's owner. Her major concern was keeping in touch with friends and family in Montana, California, and BC. She's still stuck between the two apps because of coworkers, employees, and other holdouts, though.
Why can't I use a messaging service from my desktop without having a smartphone with pre-approved operating system nearby?
I'm definitely missing out on some interactions but at the end of the day, who cares? If it's really that important I'll get the message another way. I know it's the reality now that most parents/schools use WhatsApp but that's not a reason to not want change. Crucial information should be sent via email anyways.
I also think this is the only way to actually move off the platform. You can't half-ass it, because why would others move away when you're still available?
If you said something like that to me in person, your evening would not go the way you think it would, and you’d find yourself in a conversation about your departure from the circumstances that allowed you to offer that perceived wisdom.
In what possible way does "everyone is de facto forced to use the only permitted client of a proprietary platform and agree to whatever terrible terms Facebook, a surveillance platform, dictates" sound better than "everyone still uses an open standard not solely controlled by a private surveillance company, to which any number of different clients can interconnect peacefully"?
Aside from all of that, good analysis.
Aware iPhone owners literally have the “oh, they’re green, looks like I have yet another plaintext compromise in my life and they’ll never figure out Signal” conversation with themselves every time they exchange numbers with someone new, and I’ve met more than one person who has remarked negatively to the person’s face that they are using SMS, including in a dating scenario as a dealbreaker. You might be the only person who likes it, aside from misguided parts of the Android community that praise SMS roughly like you do when discussing the lack of something like iMessage in that ecosystem, all without realizing the surveillance calculus you’ve correctly established is the real reason the carriers tie Google’s hands (even beyond Google going through messaging systems like socks).
Additionally, if someone is so petty as to consider not using iMessage as a dealbreaker, they likely have other issues that would cause a significant relationship to fail. More than a few families have one Apple user ID for 3+ phones, which makes iMessage effectively break (unless you want mom & dad to see Johnny's messages!).
This is not a monopoly, and monopolies themselves are not illegal. You mention antitrust laws but I am not sure what anticompetitive behavior is taking place here? The C&D itself is quite laughable, but speaking more generally, why should the network effect be regulated? Plenty of other communications networks are open, so any network effect of "walled gardens" ought to be attributed to the superiority of the product.
There are so many methods of communication available today, calling any one of them a monopoly is a bit absurd. You may not like what WhatsApp are doing, but that's not reason for more regulation...that's reason to switch products. But just because you don't like the alternatives isn't a valid argument for increased regulation.
It's not though. Once you become big and have reached critical mass you can pull off quite a lot of mediocre/bad stuff. Fact is the majority of people simply do not care as long as the product still works (they might not even be aware there's bad stuff going on behind the scenes) - too much effort to find a suitable alternative, convince everyone else to go to the same platform and so on
WhatsApp is currently in the "no longer superior" phase.
You're just twisting words here. The fact that switching costs are too high means it's superior. You're defining superiority to be some very strict UX that you've decided.
> then the product keeps getting worse until it's unbearable and everyone switches to the most popular superior alternative
Exactly. Once it stops being superior than people switch.
I don't see how high switching costs implies superior, nor how that's part of a definition for superior. For superior app I'd consider that to mean if it's better. It's also weird your usage of superior has shifted. You've stated it became bigger because it was superior; meaning superior is not about how much used it is. But you also define superior as having pretty much everyone use it. This seems to conflict, no?
Those tipping points are just too subtle until after a lot of damage has been done.
That is not something that WhatsApp chose, or designed, except in that they hoped that everyone would be using it.
This is not a free market, where the product in question is something that one simply purchases and continues to purchase, and can switch to any other product freely. The products in this space are, to some extent, non-interchangeable (Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp may all offer online communication with other users, but if the users you want to contact are only on one of them, that is the only one that is useful to you), and there is a significant barrier to exit.
So a product that no one would have willingly chosen to start using may still end up being used long after it is, objectively, inferior to every other offering in that product category—so long as the people using it still need to communicate with each other, and cannot easily coordinate a mass exodus to a different product.
So, when people evidently complain that they feel the social pressure to use the walled garden even though they rather wouldn't ... then that ought to be attributed to the superiority of the product?
Could you explain your reasoning behind that?
[0]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guess-what-the-mos...
The idea of network effects is that they create a cost simply for individually choosing an uncommon option, after all other costs and benefits have been accounted for. Which would obviously imply that they create an incentive to choose a common option even if it were an inferior choice without the network effect, as long as the benefits of the uncommon option don't exceed the cost caused by the network effect. Which would thus imply that a situation could arise where everyone individually chooses an inferior product. So, if you say that that can't happen, then network effects don't exist, right?
Also, how did I imply network effect doesn't exist? Where did I say anything that you're implying I said? You're trying to strip out the network effect from this theoretical product and I'm saying you can't. Something can be superior simply bc of its network. Take the most obvious example, the internet. Where is your outrage? TCP/IP sucks. BGP sucks. But we embrace these things nonetheless because of the (literal) network.
This extends from computers to anthropology to biology. You're trying to make an apples to apples comparison assuming no network effect and I'm saying that's pointless.
So, it's a cost, but not a cost? What's your point?
Also, the network effect doesn't create a benefit. The benefit of using a network (and thus the cost of not using the network) is simply what we call the network effect.
Other than that I have no clue what point you are actually trying to make, and it all smells like a whole lot of equivocation and missing the point.
Do you agree that it is possible to have a situation where one product dominates the market because individuals making rational decisions prefer that dominating product because of its dominance, even though a different product would be beneficial for every consumer of the currently dominating product if they magically agreed on switching over, even when considering the switching costs (other than the costs of reaching agreement, which is assumed to be zero for this hypothetical case)?
What's your planned thesis?
Facebook should have never been allowed to buy WhatsApp and Instagram - especially Instagram. It would've been so much better if Instagram got to be the main independent competitor (or even purchased by another company) to Facebook, than Facebook owning it.
Facebook will keep making tens of billions of dollars in the coming years, even if it's engagement drops - but Instagram may keep growing. So does that mean Facebook will be able to purchase future competitors to Instagram, too?
Screw that. It shouldn't be allowed. In fact, I think we need a law that says automatic anti-trust protection is activated on any company purchases over say $500 million.
Google should have never been allowed to purchase Admob, either. They almost rejected the deal at the time, but still ended-up letting it through. And of course all of these telecom mergers shouldn't be allowed either.
We could demand that all network protocols are fair game for reverse-engineering to enable interoperability. Or mandate public specs and save everybody a bit of effort.
But if it's my app —not the protocol or the service itself— that's generating revenue to pay for the whole thing (eg adverts), why is it fair to let people and other providers usurp that? What if I rely on a specific client setup for security (eg anti-cheat in multiplayer games)?
I do very much see your point about social colonies forming and creating their own localised monopolies, but I just cannot see a clean way to fix it. Do you?
If you have a monopoly then there are various restrictions on what you can do. Whatsapp is pretty much the way to communicate within The Netherlands. Other companies which have a monopoly and/or huge market share (e.g. 2 companies which each have 40% of the market). This e.g. resulted in KPN (ADSL/VDSL) being forced to open up their infrastructure.
I don't see how Whatsapp is earning money via their app, nor how that's relevant in case of a monopoly.
Running Whatsapp isn't free. Their servers hold messages, handle authentication, developers need salaries. Third parties should have to contribute to this too. WhatsApp should get to charge for access to their infrastructure, Just like BT/KPN/etc.
But now you're in a situation where competitors either pony up and swallow the cost themselves —as WhatsApp does— or we also force WhatsApp to not undercut its wholesale price, to make it less tempting. Price restrictions are common in attempts to overturn physical monopolies.
Open access is a lofty goal but it also cements that protocol, those phone lines, that water pipe as the provider for that type service. It can also arrest the development of the base infrastructure, as well as putting people off developing their own alternatives.
Or... We get a bit more revolutionary about things like this. If somebody makes something that becomes fundamental to society, society buys it outright. [Inter]nationalise services (and drugs, and patents, etc). In this case, buy WhatsApp, federate the service (allow people to run their own nodes) and fix the addressing so it's like email. I'm sure somebody can make cases for and against that.
There's the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
> Since communications services exhibit network effects and positive externalities, new entrants would face barriers to entry if they could not interconnect their networks with those of the incumbent carriers. Thus, another key provision of the 1996 Act sets obligations for incumbent carriers and new entrants to interconnect their networks with one another, imposing additional requirements on the incumbents because they might desire to restrict competitive entry by denying such interconnection or by setting terms, conditions, and rates that could undermine the ability of the new entrants to compete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
Wording it a bit weird, though. "interconnect their networks with one another"? If whatsapp made their client authenticate with their services so that their servers only work with their client and vice versa, would waiting for requests from would-be competitors to give them special access be sufficient to comply?
I wish a law would force the use of an open protocol for all services. Let anyone make their client, and let those clients connect to any server.
So, switch to something else and convince a few other folks to do the same (e.g. "I am not available on <whatever>, use <whatever++> if you want to talk to me"). Y'all were not always on whatsapp to begin with, so there's no reason y'all cannot leave.
Fortunately they added this statement because (IANAL) I believe those developers didn't perform any of the activities listed in the bullet points of the letter.
However all of third party WhatsApp automation is a gray area. Everybody knows that WhatsApp doesn't welcome it (I really don't know why) and they have the money to litigate, especially because no big business will ever build anything on the top of WhatsApp without a previous explicit consent. For example a bot API. I never understood why they didn't implement one. I hoped that after the FB acquisition they would, an exact copy of the Messenger one, but they still didn't. Now that all the founders left maybe things will change but I wonder what's FB's plan. WhatsApp is bigger than Messenger in many countries and with the EU stance against data sharing between the two companies I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to Messenger.
PS - Has a mass migration of community from one product to the other ever been successfully pulled off?
Tencent did a reasonable job of migrating a lot of people to WeChat from QQ, but then again QQ is also still alive and used, so it wasn't a full/complete migration.
You don't need to migrate anything on the short run. The Whatsapp classic experience will probably remain the same for those who prefer the lite messenger, with the added feature of linking a Facebook account and talking to those people too. The heavy and encouraged experience will be Messenger, that already scours the phone book of those dumb enough to use it, and is perfectly positioned to talk to Whatsapp clients.
The massive network effect this move will unlock cannot be ignored by Facebook. I'm sure Whatsapp's privacy features will suffer, but users don't value them.
I think bot API exists but is only available to selected merchants. I get an automated ping on whatsapp from BookMyShow after booking a ticket with the ticket details.
Not really if done right. Just let the human message first.
Now IM has left its early adopter stage and became an integral part of everybody's life, but in doing so we became stuck with 100% proprietary WhatsApp. Not undeserved, it works very well with billions of users, and is probably the most usable IM service ever made.
But it became so big and "essential", that it doesn't seem right that a large part of human communication is bound exclusively through their apps.
I think in the long run there would be a real benefit to opening up their protocol.
I remember the unofficial clients not being able to support the latest features, and being completely locked out as soon as a new major version of the mainline client being released.
Those that left ICQ and Yahoo moved into MSN messenger, followed by Skype.
And now there is an uniform distribution across Whatsapp, Skype and Viber.
However this is anecdote data.
(And that's mostly why it didn't matter what anyone else did). In fact, the closest thing resembling an IM standard, XMPP, was chosen not on technical merit, but rather becase the IETF group set up to standardize was (essentially) sabotaged by the members each driving their own agenda -- and after 3 years with nothing to show, when the working group disbanded, Jabber -- which was mediocre, but actually had working servers and clients -- was adopted as a standard.
I was tangentially involved with that process at the time, it was a shitshow; I would guess that's common for many standardization processes, but to my young and naive eyes it looked almost unbelievable.
All other protocols like ICQ, MSN, AIM were reversed so that you can use your Miranda/Trillian/XYZ, not what I would call "open".
The whole _point_ of implementing these APIs is to allow the user to reply using a different app; replies direct from the notification on the device itself are a hook to encourage developers who don't care about the rich integrations to allow that functionality anyway.
And that's one of the things I really like about Android: "platform" apps like WearOS don't use private APIs, they use public APIs so other developers can build on platform features. I have seven apps installed that ask for notification access, five I've granted.
WhatsApp/Facebook will then have to send C&Ds to hundreds of potentially anonymous contributors if they want any chance of taking the open-sourced app down.
However, after the recent news about spreading misinformation in India which did lead to injustices, I can see how bots may harm uninformed users more than it would help them.
Shame on WhatApps for not being able to provide an official, controlled automation solution.
> DirectChat is another useful application. It works just like Facebook Messenger’s chat bubbles but it supports a lot of different applications too. It feeds your chats into another window where you can then reply back as well. Its most popular usage was probably with WhatsApp.
I think the "Cease and Desist" letters are being sent because these two specific apps, unless there are others not mentioned by these article, are making use of APIs that are not directly part of WhatsApp but interact with it in a kind of direct way.
I wonder if the letters were sent directly to the developers or via Google Play.
Where I'm located, it doesn't seem like WhatsApp is used much, or at all. I don't think I've ever met anyone in my personal or professional lives who uses it.
So if I were building an app using these APIs, it probably wouldn't even occur to me to test it with WhatsApp. I'd test it with Messenger, sure, and SMS. Maybe even Hangouts, or whatever the newest Google chat app is.
I don't think it's farfetched to think that someone could have received one of these notices even though they've never used WhatsApp.
The solution is easy. Facebook should remove the integration from WhatsApp. Problem solved. If you don't want other apps to extend your functionality, you should not integrate with other systems.
The reality is that when a behemoth like Facebook tells you to do something and that they know were you live (probably literally), your company is at risk independently of how crazy the claims are.
Corporations are the new big abusive government. But we can't vote them out.
It is a similar problem.
You can do that with education, healthcare, transportation, security... You can have a private version of that.
Probably you can't have your own military, even that in the USA is not so clear.
Most people just can't afford the private version. The government version of that services is way cheaper, so you are stuck with it even if the government does not want to invest to have a good service.