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Comment by ghusto | Hacker News Reader

Here in the Netherlands, WhatsApp has the defacto communication tool. Everyone is expected to have it installed, not just by friends but also municipals and companies. Same level as having an e-mail address.

It's a missed opportunity for the digital soverignty the EU says it so badly needs. The code for a government backed WhatsApp competitor is there, in multiple instances even. Launch a WhatsApp clone and put all governement communication through it so everyone has to have it installed, and you have an instant EU-wide userbase. From there, people will naturally start to use it between themselves.

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Eurocrats could never in a million years make it happen. For starters, every country would insist on having its own ChatsApp, with roll out taking years. Then, to satisfy strict security and compliance regulations it would be restricted to devices passing Google & Apple hardware attestation checks. And once everyone is finally forced to be on board, any confidentiality guarantees can go out the window to catch pedos and terrorists.

It's for the best.

So true. Even within a country, different states would argue for their own version of it. (Looking at you, Bavaria)

Mastodon instances would be a drop-in replacement, no? Federated instances and as a bonus, it solves the biggest problem of new users not knowing which server to join. Just join your local government's if you don't know of another.

You speak as if these are simple operations, and technically they are but socially they are not.

Funny, it has already happened: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/developer-portal/me...

> For starters, every country would insist on having its own ChatsApp

Fine, let's say the Netherlands should do it for their own citizens only (but in a broad way to keep the door open for EU adoption)

> to satisfy strict security and compliance regulations it would be restricted to devices passing Google & Apple hardware attestation checks

Banking apps are already restricted to locked Android and iOS devices, and they are all but mandatory, unless you want a very difficult life.

> And once everyone is finally forced to be on board, any confidentiality guarantees can go out the window to catch pedos and terrorists

I don't see how. We all already have the Digid app?

Reminds me of what Brasil did with Pix which of course the outside payment processors have been trying to undo.

The EU should rather embrace open standards rather than building a closed competitor here. We already have XMPP and Matrix, all that's required is for public institutions to use them.

For what purpose? All this discussion about open alternatives to closed systems always leaves out what the purpose is. For broadcasting public information that is not time critical, I think they should use HTTP and HTML.

It is ubiquitous, but as a Dutchie who's never had WhatsApp, it is not quite at the level of an email address yet, luckily.

I think my main communication is probably the last tool that I want to be government backed tbh.

Even if it's communication/announcements from the government?

I too am constantly frustrated that official communications from governments happen on Twitter or Facebook.

Communications/announcements from the government can easily be posted on the government's website or, if really needed, sent as an SMS

My local government still lets you sign up for email notifications about services and local alerts. It’s great!

Too expensive, bad idea.

What do you mean? They'll just pass a law saying carriers have to deliver them for free

SMS are virtually free for every carrier. The prices for the customers exist to partially offset the fixed costs of the infrastructure (which already exists).

Here unlimited free SMS for customers has been the norm for most plans.

This is how you get the Andy Burnham "don't use disposable BBQs" announcement sent via the emergency system.

are those your "main communication" tools?

I agree that I don't trust governments today to provide the necessary confidentiality guarantees but remember that both physical mail and the phone network are government backed - in the sense that they set the rules even if they are operated by private entities in some countries.

what country are you from that you trust US corps more than your own government?

That bar is low. Less than 8% of the world population lives in a full democracy (Economist Democracy Index).

US corporations aren't full democracies either

Arguably that number is 8℅ too high

I hear this sentiment a lot from people in the USA. They deeply distrust their government and can't imagine it being different anyway else in the world.

I think the lessons of 2026 must be:

- the dangers of fascism are very real

- technological choices won't save you from the snatch squads, although grassroots use of tech by communities can help

- fascism is extensively promoted by some corporations and their owners

- a non-captured government that is willing to push back is much better than relying on corporations

- anything headquartered in America is potentially subject to arbitrary sanctions against non-US users

- just because we don't like the solution doesn't mean the problem isn't real (see age verification debate)

Fascinating! Where I live, fascism is not the threat, it is rampant socialism. It is spreading like cancer and destroying lives and economies.

Where do you live? Because I’m guessing you’re wrong.

Probably he lives on Twitter.

Lmao

Do you think if government accounts were on Signal, people would install it?

Signal is an improvement, but not federated.

Signal requires a mobile phone for an account; so it's not entirely web-friendly. Plus, can you read what's posted to signal without an account?

For now: https://aboutsignal.com/news/signal-login-registration-witho...

> It's a missed opportunity for the digital soverignty the EU says it so badly needs. The code for a government backed WhatsApp competitor is there, in multiple instances even. Launch a WhatsApp clone and put all governement communication through it so everyone has to have it installed, and you have an instant EU-wide userbase. From there, people will naturally start to use it between themselves.

I think you have completely misjudged how much the majority of people would not want to use an EU-controlled chat app.

Which is one of the many many reasons Zuckerberg needs to be investigated the hell out of for every single thing he does

I grant you 2014 is 12 years ago now and you could plausibly argue it was their doing to grow network effects but I'm pretty sure WA had that infrastructure already in place - Acton, Koum et al already did the ground work to get carriers to... whatever it is

Zuckerberg stole it like he steals everything

People insisted then that paying tens of Instagram for WhatsApp was too much.

I have no idea. The point is they took competition out back, and shot it

Whether that's 'too much' depends on your view of it

I'm tired of people calling them 'savvy acquisitions'. Not when Zuck's on record as saying 'Instagram can hurt us'

The problem is that an EU-mandated digital communicating tool would look like the Minitel.

Anyone remembering the French minitel?

I think it was quite good for the 1980s, it just got stuck there.

Touché. Getting stuck with an obsolete service/protocol for decades is a nightmare, even if it is just ye olde user inertia. If it is mandated by law or pushed by the government, it becomes nearly impossible to update.

In this, I trust the government way less than either the open source movement or the actual Silicon Valley. Both of the latter are much better at iterating of their designs when a new idea comes along.

That's the fate of all government-backed systems as well as all decentralised systems. The former can't evolve because of extreme bureaucracy and the latter can't evolve because of incompatibility trauma and fragmentation.

But in either case we do have the ability to make a new system every 10 years.

People seemed to like it being stuck in the 1980s.

Why not just a website?

Hard to keep up with lots of sites. At least provide a common interface, like an atom feed.

Are you supposed to keep up with lots of sites? Which ones would you want to keep up with?

Government, municipalities, bank, large corporations, the list is endless. A curated RSS feed would work, but someone would have to do the curating.

There is a carrier neutral WhatsApp, called SMS.

Not even remotely close.

For natural disaster emergency annoucememt it is more reliable than whatsapp.

Cell Broadcast yes, SMS no.

Isnt the one just "mass usage" of the other?

Like Cell Broadcast just duplicates the SMS on carrier level?

Nah, Cell Broadcast has a lot less overhead since it does not have to do any routing or delivery confirmation and such. The load does not scale based on recipients which makes it far more reliable during an emergency.

Sorry, maybe I did "carrier replication" wrong - I used the word in a sense of "it is duplicated at the local cell by the towers", instead of getting "fed with 1mio receivers in region X by the telco servercentral HQ"

Im wrong, I guess?

Cell broadcast, depending on the emergency level set by the sender, also makes your phone vibrate until you read the message, and may also cause it to play a loud siren noise. Which is the sort of thing you want in a real emergency.

Why, because it can't be monetized by Facebook?

Because it doesn't do the job well. It's difficult to send any media, group chats are a pain, international messages often incur fees, it doesn't work on wifi-only, and so on.

Whatsapp is used by a lot of "neighbourhood watch" groups, so you'd need an IRC-like channel to replace it.

Yes, no, try to have group chat with SMS, and tell me how that went...

RTS is the SMS replacement and is quite old. And as evidence it works, I direct your attention to the ubiquitous iMessage, which only "couldn't" interop with Android because Apple was trying the vendor lock-in approach and actively enshittifying its own users' experience and blaming it on Android users.

Do you mean RCS or are these 2 seperate things?

Which it also had to do because SMS doesn't have half its features, like encryption and sending images.

Assuming you mean RCS, to which Google built a proprietary E2EE extension, remains the only client with no API to build off of and if I recall requires play attestation.

Hardly a complete solution, it devolved into a Google power grab, in my opinion.

For once I half agree with apple when they say its less secure, as apple-to-google comms are not E2EE like they are for google-to-google. While that is fixable with a hack its still a hack, not part of the protocol.

Whatsapp etc. only took off because SMS is so limited, and the mobile companies are so profit-focused they can't make a decent competitor.

(how is whatsapp paid for again?)

It's not all about profit as European SMS is now free. It is however about decentralisation stifling feature development - a trap we run into again and again, from email to IRC to SMS to Fediverse/ATProto.

WhatsApp is one company so if they want to enable sending images they can just do it, and they don't have to coordinate with anyone else. MMS was a failure because you couldn't be sure if your recipient would actually get it, or if your carrier would actually let you send it.

SMS made you pay by character. RCS is the current free alternative.

so instead using Meta product you suggest using Google product, great alternative for Europe independence

it's like when they wanna get rid of Visa/MC by switching to EU apps, which will require Google/Apple verification, what an improvement...

RCS is an international standard. Google only adds their client (and running the service if your mobile provider doesn't).

Don't know what EU apps are you talking about, but yes, mobile apps need Google services. Web interfaces don't.

please tell me ONE app for Android other than Google Messages I can use to send and receive RCS, it surely won't be problem since it's international standard same as SMS, so there must be plenty apps available...

Pretty much all banking apps for Android won't work without Google Play Services, so once again if you are using Lineage or Graphene, you are still stuck with US company to use your European banking services on the phone.

> please tell me ONE app for Android other than Google Messages I can use to send and receive RCS, it surely won't be problem since it's international standard same as SMS, so there must be plenty apps available...

Nice red herring. The number of implementations is irrelevant here, although Wikipedia says Samsung had one too.

Here's the standard, try Ctrl+F "Google": https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/netwo...

TLDR there is only Google product if you wanna use RCS on Android phone

nobody cares about standards, if they are pretty much monopolized by one comapny

Cell towers failed in my region after a hurricane. SMS is pointless in that situation.

So can internet.

Not neutral if you are Apple. That's their battlefield

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