Meta will let third-party apps place calls to WhatsApp and Messenger users | Hacker News Reader

Meta will let third-party apps place calls to WhatsApp and Messenger users

techcrunch.com

71 pointsmrkramer24 comments

It looks like the long time line is to give them time to plan a terrible user experience for third-party messages. They don't want to risk it becoming something useful

> Meta requires that companies sign an agreement — the details of which haven’t been made public — to integrate with any of its systems.

What sort of agreement, an NDA type of agreement? Is this ruling out open source software? I wonder what the EU thinks about this.

I expect it's mostly uncontentious stuff:

- Don't give access to other third party apps (don't act as a proxy)

- Manage spam

- Don't overload or reverse engineer [their] systems with the keys you're given

- Take care of adapting to API changes and doing upgrades in a timely manner

- Treat messages from Meta with a reciprocal amount of diligence

Of course they might have nefarious language in there, but I would think they'd think twice before doing that for a product meant to appease regulators.

I wouldn't trust them not trying something; the full NDA should also be made available to the EC to ensure they aren't secretly pulling an Apple, or worse.

The nature of an NDA does not lend itself to being published. That said, I don't trust them either, but I also know they're not stupid.

> In 2025, Meta will roll out group functionality for third-party chats, and, in 2027, it’ll launch voice and video calling in accordance with the DMA.

Well, that's a timeline!

Ideally this would help boost popularity & adoption, that whomever can make the best ability to integrate will see great rewards.

Looks like a way to take some market share from iMessage. I don't think this is going to change much for international markets where a lot of people already use Whatsapp but it might change things in the US.

>I don't think this is going to change much for international markets where a lot of people already use Whatsapp but it might change things in the US.

I think this is only EU thing but we will see what happens. It seems like Zuck is starting to experiment with interop more and more hence Threads supports fediverse and now he gave in to the EU regarding interop with other chat apps.

> Threads supports fediverse and now he gave in to the EU regarding interop with other chat apps.

What would him NOT "[giving] in" to the EU even look like? Pulling out entirely?

Perhaps challenging it in court but EU is too important for Meta for them not to be present there.

Looks like FB has learned from MS. Extend,Embrace,Extinguish

They are legally pressed to give in but I think Zuck realized that his social services are so dominant that he doesn't even care anymore if his social services interop with other social services.

Can't wait for all the spam calls I'll get.

Why would that change, spammers can use WhatsApp now already to spam?

>"Plus, Meta requires that companies sign an agreement — the details of which haven’t been made public — to integrate with any of its systems"

It was too good to be true. Signal compatibility might not happen without wrecking security with non-whatsapp chats

IMO this is likely to invalidates the whole thing. This NDA might entail paying a billion dollar fee monthly to Meta, for all we know (unlilely). Or allowing Meta to read all of their users messages (very likely).

You could apply for one and tell us (breaking NDA)

I doubt Signal would integrate. It would be a cold day in hell before Meta implements Signal's E2EE protocol. And Signal removed SMS support, so I think unless they had full E2EE they'd simply pass on integrating.

Does it even matter? The cost of having two apps on my phone is basically zero. Trillian was cool, but these days I’m not sure anyone cares enough about the “chat fragmentation” pain point to demand protocol level interoperability between apps.

I’ve got different apps and talk to different people on each. It’s not like I’m splitting one conversation across two apps. So when I want to talk to someone (or some group) I use the app where we’ve been having our conversation. Switching cost is high and all the major apps have extensive feature parity. In the rare instance where myself and/or anyone in a conversation has a need for a feature that’s only offered in another app, then we’ll move the conversation there. But we’re not moving all our other conversations and “I want to consolidate” isn’t sufficient justification to ask someone to move theirs.

Maybe this is because we already consolidated our separate communication channels into one mobile device, which serves as a consistent form factor for delivering vendor-agnostic chat experiences. Just like Trillian provided one interface to receive notifications and initiate messages, so too does my phone. I get notifications from WhatsApp and Signal on one screen, that I can control with one focus mode, and navigating to one or the other requires a tap or two on my screen. The problems of maintaining separate AIM, MSN, and Skype accounts just don’t exist in the same way they did back when Trillian had obvious appeal.

Ironically the fragmentation has actually reduced the power of (non-interoperable) SMS protocols, since chat apps are so common that any pair of people can chat without depending on it. But if anything should be interoperable it’s the OS-level chat APIs like iMessage, which only exist because of historical SMS dominance and now find themselves in the weird spot of being just another app-level messenger.

I'm not arguing for or against it, just pointing out that for purely pragmatic reasons it almost certainly wouldn't happen.

Whatsapp has used Signal's protocol since 2016 https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

HN comments today are either cynical or commending. Internet comments are only commending. Very little discussion as of yet what benefits this would give to facebook, the other apps, and the users.

Unless they are absolutely splitting up the platform into a public service, I think this is a stunt to domesticate other platforms into a facebook empire.

Holly cannoli it seems to me Meta is seeing some ruling against them and their omnipresence in messaging and social network spaces.

So... if I am living in EU and I am using ABC app but my family is outside EU, say UK using messenger. Will this work or both users must be in EU ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com