Comment by fariszr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fariszr | Hacker News Reader

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> how do I know that I can trust the protocol?

It's going to show you which app and probably which protocol is going to be used, then you can decide on your own how to proceed.

> really fear that in practice, it will just weaken end-to-end encryption everywhere. And for what? I have absolutely no problem using multiple apps to talk with friends right now, I don't need one "super-app".

You always have the option to just use the same app? That won't go away, and it will still have advantages

> But maybe that is actually a political incentive: if you can't make E2EE illegal (in order to spy on your citizen), make it weak.

The idea is to kill the network effect in chat apps, it way too strong now, to the point that even the WhatsApp policy change controversy didn't kill it, everybody complained, opened a signal account and then just continued using WhatsApp

And of course they did the master class of withdrawing the change then rolling it out when the news cycle fizzled out, so that 'protest' had literally no effect on WhatsApp and it's dominant position.

> It's going to show you which app and probably which protocol is going to be used, then you can decide on your own how to proceed.

I was quoting the part that says: "You shouldn’t need to know what messaging app your friends or family use".

> You always have the option to just use the same app? That won't go away, and it will still have advantages

I will not know if the person I'm talking to is using the official Signal app or Tiktok, will I?

> to the point that even the WhatsApp policy change controversy didn't kill it

I think it was only a change in the ToS that was reflecting what they had already been doing in practice for years, right? Most people I know did not really care, they just got exposed to alternatives (Signal, Telegram, Threema), and then realized that WhatsApp was just fine for them.

> The idea is to kill the network effect in chat apps

I am not sure it will, for the same reason almost everybody uses Google Chrome (not a Chromium variant) or Safari even when there is no lock-in: people just use what they are exposed to.

I guess it is nice to force them to have an open API, but forcing WhatsApp to interoperate with some arbitrary alternatives (through e.g. a "Telegram" tab?) risks making WhatsApp weird and creating all sorts of problems.

An open API enables third-party apps, and that's cool. But forcing WhatsApp to support third-party protocols in their own app is just weird to me.

> I will not know if the person I'm talking to is using the official Signal app or Tiktok, will I?

Well, if meta is going to sign an agreement with the app, it's probably going to show which app a user is using, especially to avoid username/phone number collisions between platforms.

> I think it was only a change in the ToS that was reflecting what they had already been doing in practice for years, right? Most people I know did not really care, they just got exposed to alternatives (Signal, Telegram, Threema), and then realized that WhatsApp was just fine for them.

Nope, it was much bigger than that, it also heavily widened the scope of the data they stored without encryption.

> I am not sure it will, for the same reason almost everybody uses Google Chrome (not a Chromium variant) or Safari even when there is no lock-in: people just use what they are exposed to.

Chromium isn't relevant here, Email is. Even though Gmail and Outlook control like 90% of the market, it didn't stop competitors like Proton or Hey from existing, it allows others to innovate without hitting the same issue, lack of users on their platforms.

> An open API enables third-party apps, and that's cool. But forcing WhatsApp to support third-party protocols in their own app is just weird to me

I don't think they have to support anything, it's just an open API, the other app has to be compatible with WhatsApp to be able to send anything. Also, why not? They have the capability to do so.

I find matrix's article on this very useful https://matrix.org/blog/2022/02/03/digital-markets-act-and-i...

Let me take a step back. I believe that enforcing interoperability has downsides, and they should be acknowledged. And I can't help but to think that this law is rather a lobbying effort to undermine the "winners" of the current situation. Let's note that a ton of people are using alternatives to WhatsApp today. Probably not less than people who are using "alternative" email providers (which you mentioned as a "good example"), actually?

I completely see how Matrix has everything to win from that law, so of course they will lobby for it. And the article you linked reads (to me) like a bunch of highly-debatable unconvincing marketing statements. I personally am not a big fan of the Matrix protocol, and I find that using Matrix is really painful (and I tried hard to love Matrix). Telling me that "the solution is to enforce Matrix everywhere" will obviously not convince me.

I do believe that interoperability is a feature that may or may not be desirable. E-mail is great for that, and I am happy it exists. But other protocols have other strengths, and that should be okay. Why should we all agree on a "standard way of communicating"?

And note that I hate BigTech as much as the next guy. I just don't think that writing a law that would (for instance) force every second person to use Firefox would be the good way to promote Firefox.

> Telling me that "the solution is to enforce Matrix everywhere" will obviously not convince me.

thankfully nobody’s saying that, so you’re fine :)

There’s a bunch more concrete details on this at https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3345-open... - the March 2022 blog post is a little stale now :)

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