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Matt Burgess

NEW: WhatsApp will soon make it possible to chat with people who use other messaging apps. It's revealed some more details on how that will work.

— Apps will need to sign an agreement with Meta, then connect to its servers.
— Meta wants people to use the Signal Protocol, but also says other encryption protocols can be used if they can meet WhatsApp's standards
— WhatsApp has been testing with Matrix in recent months, although nothing is agreed yet. Swiss app Threema says it won't become interoperable

wired.com/story/whatsapp-inter #tech #whatsapp #dma #infosec #news #technology

6 February at 17:40 | Open on infosec.exchange
75 comments
Matt Burgess
Christof Damian 💙💛

@mattburgess
Remember when Facebook messenger was XMPP.
@Gargron

6 February at 17:47 | Open on rls.social
Dallas (Join Something IRL)

@mattburgess

Most people don't remember, but as part of the AOL TimeWarner merger, AOL was forced to agree to open their protocols to allow other company's to chat with AOL messenger. Most other companies refused to participate because they wanted the messenger monopoly instead.

6 February at 17:55 | Open on deacon.social
Shanie

@1dalm @mattburgess Yeah this feels like Meta is trying to get in front of something - they don't need everyone on their service if the service goes through them. They want to be "The Carrier"; Ma Bell would be proud.

6 February at 19:20 | Open on mastodon.tails.ch
Dallas (Join Something IRL)

@shanie @mattburgess

And it's a big big risk for them. Most people don't understand how risky the fediverse is. There is a lot of personal information on this network that anyone can mine. If they open up, then they will be responsible for managing systems and users that have not agreed to their terms of service.

6 February at 19:36 | Open on deacon.social
Shanie

@1dalm @mattburgess You would think that, but what if they petition the government to *actually be* a common carrier? And sure it possibly won’t work in the United States, but this is practically what they do in India, where they restrict the Internet to only be Facebook if you get a phone through their third-party.

Do you make agreements with a common carrier?

6 February at 23:30 | Open on mastodon.tails.ch
nbkt

@shanie
The DMA forces them. They aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They just aren't quite as silly as MS and let the US get the goodies too.
@1dalm @mattburgess

7 February at 5:59 | Open on mastodon.social
Keev 🇺🇦
Wesley Cook ⚡🚲

@mattburgess Any news on if Messenger will also be compatible with this?

Edit: I'm talking about something like Signal to Messenger

6 February at 17:59 | Open on theatl.social
jokergermany

@wesley @mattburgess The Problem is that signal wants to stay a walled garden ;)

6 February at 19:48 | Open on social.tchncs.de
huntingdon

@jokergermany @wesley @mattburgess

Of course it does. There be monsters out there. Why let them in? It's also a small player, except for politicians wanting to do state business outside of official state telecomms protocols.

6 February at 19:53 | Open on mstdn.social
DELETED

@jokergermany @wesley @mattburgess Signal's main deal is about keeping your chats private and secure. But when your messages jump over to WhatsApp, there might be some privacy and security risks if the encryption fails. I prefer convincing my contacts to switch to Signal to reduce our reliance on big tech, and if interoperability becomes a thing it will be pointless to convert! It'd be nice if Signal worked with other apps, but it could also come with some hidden risks.

6 February at 23:38 | Open on mastodon.social
Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel

@mattburgess People still hating on the EU? They should force iMessage into this as well.

6 February at 18:00 | Open on rls.social
Markus

@alper @mattburgess iMessage is automatically "compatible" with every other smartphone because of autofallback to SMS/MMS. So I can't imagine that the EU would want to force anything here. Or am I missing something? 🤔

6 February at 19:03 | Open on mastodon.social
Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel

@markusr @mattburgess The app falls back to regular text but the protocol doesn’t. Seems like a big difference to me.

6 February at 19:13 | Open on rls.social
Lardier

@markusr
Apple started to implement RCS in iMessges. Maybe this will be the interopability protocol.
@alper @mattburgess

6 February at 21:03 | Open on troet.cafe
Mark Chick

@mattburgess the rules make sense, but I suspect most don’t use WhatsApp for good reasons. Those same reasons wouldn’t persuade me to go anywhere near it, even if interoperability is possible.

Imagine the our-way-or-the-highway agreement Meta would expect other apps to sign.

6 February at 18:03 | Open on toot.bike
Laberpferd

@DurableAce @mattburgess

I am torn on this

On the one side, i personally dont want to touch the Facebook and its brothers

On the other side, it would be AMAZING! if i could for the first time be able to write with all the "normal" people who have just Whatsapp and nothing else

6 February at 19:22 | Open on sueden.social
Mark Chick

@Laberpferd @mattburgess where is the fun in being normal? 😉

6 February at 22:26 | Open on toot.bike
Laberpferd

@DurableAce @mattburgess

Its the pain of sitting alone at home all the weekends for all the years, beeing cut off from any fun meetup and events, because the people who make it are never (or non longer) using Mastodon-XMPP-Matrix etc

7 February at 5:46 | Open on sueden.social
nbkt

@DurableAce
WhatsApp is basically required in some countries (like Germany) for social interaction/work/school. It has become synonymous with texting here.
@mattburgess

7 February at 6:01 | Open on mastodon.social
Stuart Crabtree
Polychrome :clockworkheart:
@mattburgess wait, how are they going to get into an agreement with Matrix (service) when Matrix (organization) isn't in control of Matrix instances? :thonking:​
6 February at 18:13 | Open on poly.cybre.city
prognozują opady śniegu
@mattburgess they should switch back to messenger using xmpp instead
6 February at 18:22 | Open on bunnyanarchy.org
Claudius

@mattburgess "embrace expand extinguish" applies here, too. Do not fall for it.

6 February at 18:27 | Open on darmstadt.social
Áron

@claudius @mattburgess Would you prefer if they stayed closed down?

6 February at 22:33 | Open on mograph.social
Claudius

@aronkvh @mattburgess The conversation will work like this:

"Hey, I sent you that WhatsApp"
"yeah what was that about?"
"I used a new function in WhatsApp"
"but I'm not using WhatsApp, I'm using <insert different app here>"
"oh, that's inconvenient. Can you maybe just switch to WhatsApp instead?"

Interoperability barely works when all parties have common goals and good intentions. I do not assume meta to have good intentions.

6 February at 22:39 | Open on darmstadt.social
Dieu

@claudius @aronkvh @mattburgess fail to see how this should make people who even refused to use WhatsApp while it wasn't interoperable *at all* to switch to it. 3E doesn't work just because you hope or fear it will. I do not see any plausible path to success here.

7 February at 8:15 | Open on hespere.de
Claudius

@hllizi @aronkvh @mattburgess I have seen this pattern with XMPP on Facebook chat.

I have seen this with people asking other people to get on Gmail (because gmail -> gmail end up in spam less often (I wonder why!? /s))

Heck I've seen this with Funny SMS ASCII-images that only worked correctly on other Nokia phones.

I don't really care if you don't find it plausible.

7 February at 9:00 | Open on darmstadt.social
Dieu

@claudius @aronkvh @mattburgess and I don't care what you care about, but I didn't think that this was the issue.

7 February at 9:02 | Open on hespere.de
Sky Leite

@mattburgess This is awesome. I can't wait to get rid of Whatsapp

6 February at 18:29 | Open on social.coop
Thomas Blechschmidt

@mattburgess And then WhatsApp will be able to read, download and save our data and use info of our behaviour?

6 February at 18:41 | Open on mastodon.social
Sabrina Web :privacypride:

@energiepirat @mattburgess this is what worries me the most, and the article doesn't speak about it

6 February at 19:12 | Open on sociale.network
Thomas Blechschmidt

@sabrinaweb71 @mattburgess That's why i mentioned it. Zuckerberg and Microsoft - I don't trust them not even for half a Nano-Meter. Google a bit better but not good enough. I don't want entreprenuers to praise their products and politicians to design their speeches to cheat us by using our own data analysed by some strange algorithms. And after getting our votes or our money they show us the Urologist finger.

6 February at 19:36 | Open on mastodon.social
minecraftchest1

@energiepirat
I have trust in Microsoft, solely because they mentioned in their Privacy Policy how they keep minors data private. I don't trust Google or Facebook at all.

I still don't use very mamy of Microsoft's and Google's products (out side of where I am forced to do so for school).
@sabrinaweb71 @mattburgess

7 February at 11:37 | Open on social.opendesktop.org
Sander Meijer
Stu

@mattburgess Well, this is interesting. Does the Signal Protocol allow interoperability with other encryption protocols?

Perhaps the article explains, which I'll get into now, but on the face of it this seems slightly odd. Not that I want to knock further efforts to improve interoperability, obviously.

Edit - ah! It's going to be like Pidgin, in effect.

6 February at 19:08 | Open on hachyderm.io
huntingdon
Nicole Parsons
Chris Ely

Thank you Threema, for immediately taking a clear and responsible position on this strategy!

@threemaapp

@mattburgess

6 February at 19:33 | Open on fosstodon.org
XTB 🇮🇱🇺🇦
Chris Ely

Is there a transcript and translation of that interview available?

@xtb
@threemaapp

6 February at 23:19 | Open on fosstodon.org
XTB 🇮🇱🇺🇦

@tcely

Part 1/3

[00:00:02] Intro
Deutschlandfunk Kultur Broadband.

[00:00:05] Moderator
Oh, how easy it would be if I couldn't care which messenger my friends use. For example WhatsApp, Imessage, Signal or Streamer, if I could use my messenger to send messages to any other messenger. If the EU has its way, this wish will actually become reality. It wants to impose interoperability on the major services in future. Market-dominating providers would then have to offer functions for exchanging text messages with smaller services. This is what the Digital Market Act says. Only smaller services are actually not so keen on the idea. I spoke about this with the CEO of Threema, Martin Blatter, whose messenger service from Switzerland advertises that it offers a very high level of data security. I wanted to know from him whether this data security could still be guaranteed when it comes to this exchange. And I also asked him to explain exactly what the idea behind this regulation is.

[00:01:08] Martin Blatter
The idea of the regulators is actually that you can send messages from one messenger to another messenger, to another provider. So that means that the messengers can communicate with each other, whether that will actually be possible in the future or not. We will see. My personal assessment is that this is more of a paper tiger. So that means that at least the messengers that have a certain sensitivity to issues such as data protection and security will not participate in this interoperability.

[00:01:51] Moderator
Well, in principle, you don't just send text messages, you also send pictures, voice messages, GIFs, sometimes even video calls. But not every messenger has the same functions. That would have to be standardised, wouldn't it?

[00:02:08] Martin Blatter
That would indeed be the case, but it's not realistic because the focus of the various messengers is very different. There are messenger providers who want to learn as little as possible about their users, while others want exactly the opposite. They want to know as much as possible about the behaviour, preferences and contact network of their users because they earn their money by collecting and collating such information. These fundamental differences in these philosophies run through the protocols of the respective messengers. Accordingly, there is never a congruence and it would also be completely unrealistic for every messenger to implement every function, because there are good reasons for not wanting to.

[00:02:58] Moderator
And then there's another point that is of course probably important for you, for streamers. It's about encryption and of course the question arises as to whether this is still possible if all platforms can talk to each other in the future.

@threemaapp

@tcely

Part 1/3

[00:00:02] Intro
Deutschlandfunk Kultur Broadband.

[00:00:05] Moderator
Oh, how easy it would be if I couldn't care which messenger my friends use. For example WhatsApp, Imessage, Signal or Streamer, if I could use my messenger to send messages to any other messenger. If the EU has its way, this wish will actually become reality. It wants to impose interoperability on the major services in future. Market-dominating providers would then have to offer functions for exchanging text messages...

7 February at 0:41 | Open on mastodon.de
XTB 🇮🇱🇺🇦

@tcely

Part 2/3
[00:03:17] Martin Blatter
The directive stipulates that the security level should be maintained. Specifically, I think the directive even mentions end-to-end encryption. But security does not only mean encryption. Ultimately, the weakest link in the chain determines what happens to content and, above all, personal data. I'll call the top dogs these big gatekeepers. They are not really interested in the content and are perhaps even happy not to know it, as this could then lead to further regulatory consequences. For example, content, moderation and stories like that. So if you don't know it, you don't have to moderate it. This metadata is actually sufficient for the expansion of the social graph. In other words, who is communicating with whom, when, where, how the groups are put together, etc. And that is perhaps the exciting information and that is not really covered by the regulation, because encryption alone is not necessarily incredibly relevant.
And if you remember the phrase from the NSA or later CIA chief Hayden, they said We kill people based on metad ata. And government regulation could therefore involuntarily lead to these top dogs receiving additional user metadata. And of all people, the users who have consciously opted for a more data-efficient messenger. And that of course increases the value of the data collection, these top dogs. And I don't think that was in the interest of the regulators. It would backfire on them. I like to say that well-intentioned is not always well done.

[00:05:14] Moderator
What is the situation from your perspective as a provider? Do you see the possibility of complying with these requirements? Or would you say that this is a problem that would completely jeopardise our business model?

[00:05:30] Martin Blatter
That in any case. So the idea of this interoperability, of course. That sounds very appealing at first glance. We all know this situation from the club or school. If you have a WhatsApp group, then you're left out. Especially if you don't trust the WhatsApp provider. And from this point of view, if every messenger should or can talk to every other messenger, then as a user of a data-saving messenger like Threema, you don't just have to trust one provider, but any number of them. And among them will certainly be messengers whose data protection practices are rather questionable.

@threemaapp

@tcely

Part 2/3
[00:03:17] Martin Blatter
The directive stipulates that the security level should be maintained. Specifically, I think the directive even mentions end-to-end encryption. But security does not only mean encryption. Ultimately, the weakest link in the chain determines what happens to content and, above all, personal data. I'll call the top dogs these big gatekeepers. They are not really interested in the content and are perhaps even happy not to know it, as this could then lead to further...

7 February at 0:42 | Open on mastodon.de
XTB 🇮🇱🇺🇦

@tcely

Part 3/3
[00:06:19] Moderator
Well, that's actually a done deal. They have major doubts about it, partly because they see their business model as being somewhat jeopardised. And, of course, the security of communication. Do you think the EU will allow itself to be dissuaded from the plan?

[00:06:34] Martin Blatter
That's difficult to judge. Of course, I don't know the EU's decision-making processes that well. The roadmap for this Digital Market Act, i.e. specifically for this interoperability for messengers, is designed for a longer period of time, starting first in March next year with one-to-one messaging. In other words, what users will then be able to do. Group messaging will follow a year later and then, at some point in 2027, calls and, more specifically, video calls should also be possible. Both one-to-one, i.e. two users with each other or with several users, for example. I don't think they will be dissuaded from this. But it may well be that the whole thing develops into a paper tiger. This means that ultimately none of the small messengers, at least the privacy-conscious, data-saving messengers, will decide to participate in mobility. That's a pretty realistic scenario. And then the regulators might really have to go over the books again.

[00:07:53] Moderator
Or could that possibly mean the end of Threema's service, for example?

[00:08:01] Martin Blatter
I don't think so. Exactly. As I said, if we don't participate here, nothing will change in principle. We have no obligations as a result of this regulation.

[00:08:12] Moderator
The fact is, the EU is now also thinking ahead. It's not just focussing on messengers, but also on all the social networks. Wouldn't that also be an opportunity for smaller alternative platforms? After all, users could then easily connect to much stronger social networks via this platform without having to be in a business relationship with the large platform themselves. platforms, for example with Meta.

[00:08:42] Martin Blatter
I think there are still a lot of legal issues that are still unresolved. For example, if a social network could post on another network, the data would still end up with Meta, even though you have a contract with another provider. And that could be quite exciting from a legal point of view.

The End.

@threemaapp

@tcely

Part 3/3
[00:06:19] Moderator
Well, that's actually a done deal. They have major doubts about it, partly because they see their business model as being somewhat jeopardised. And, of course, the security of communication. Do you think the EU will allow itself to be dissuaded from the plan?

[00:06:34] Martin Blatter
That's difficult to judge. Of course, I don't know the EU's decision-making processes that well. The roadmap for this Digital Market Act, i.e. specifically for this interoperability...

7 February at 0:44 | Open on mastodon.de
Parade du Grotesque 💀

@mattburgess

Which means that, now, Meta / Facebook will be able to analyze your social tree even better.

As a reminder, metadata - in other words who is talking to who - is sometimes just as important (if not more) than knowing what they said to each other.

6 February at 19:54 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Matt Crawford
Sollace :bh_c_us:

@thecrawford @mattburgess
Because there's a significant friction in getting all your contacts to move to signal with you.

That said, this change makes it sound like it will alleviate that to some extent and I might finally be able to ditch whatsapp myself.

7 February at 8:09 | Open on equestria.social
Matt Crawford

@sollace @mattburgess that's very true, getting my parents to move to signal did feel like the greatest single achievement of mankind.

7 February at 8:34 | Open on mastodonapp.uk
Merospit

@mattburgess Signal want to control all clients accessing their servers. They don't want to be an open protocol network, so this won't actually allow federation between Meta and Signal users.

6 February at 20:19 | Open on infosec.exchange
Івась Тарасик
@mattburgess been there, done that (with #google talk). fool me once…
6 February at 20:27 | Open on social.net.ua
Escaping Galt's Gorean Gulch

@mattburgess Zuck going all in on trying to kill everything.

6 February at 20:42 | Open on orbital.horse
MarkAssPandi

@mattburgess Agreement be like: "You will send all user data in case they want to talk to some messenger user at some point :)"

6 February at 20:42 | Open on void.rehab
b00tl00ps

@mattburgess If I wanted to engage meta-minds, I'd have a meta-account.

6 February at 20:58 | Open on social.linux.pizza
Voline

@mattburgess @evacide
When I’m using Signal to communicate with someone I am confident that our conversation is confidential in transit because we are both using the Signal protocol, because that’s all the Signal client can do.

Supporting multiple protocols means I may not be getting the security I expect when I start the conversation. This is my main problem with using iMessage.

Typing out a message to another user feeling secure in iMessage I hit Send and my text appears in a green bubble: “Oops, I guess not”.

(Green bubble denotes that the message was sent via SMS with no encryption whatsoever.)

@mattburgess @evacide
When I’m using Signal to communicate with someone I am confident that our conversation is confidential in transit because we are both using the Signal protocol, because that’s all the Signal client can do.

Supporting multiple protocols means I may not be getting the security I expect when I start the conversation. This is my main problem with using iMessage.

6 February at 21:00 | Open on kolektiva.social
CaveDave

@Voline @mattburgess @evacide yeah, I tend to turn off SMS fallback because of that, such that it waits until they get to connect to Wi-Fi. I feel it's way better especially for privacy and security reasons

6 February at 22:52 | Open on mastodon.social
Patrick Schmitz

@mattburgess this is what I was afraid of when the talks about opening up started here in the EU. This is no interoperability, it is just the existing big players dictating that others have to implement their way of doing things on their terms.

How many protocols will a messaging app end up needing to implement to be interoperable? This will make things worse, not better.

6 February at 21:08 | Open on mstdn.social
Matěj Cepl 🇪🇺 🇨🇿 🇺🇦

@mattburgess European Commission forced to do it. See this presentation on this #FOSDEM fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event I am not sure, whether records of the video will be available.

6 February at 21:12 | Open on floss.social
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@mattburgess thank you for making clear this crucial bit:

> It isn’t a shift entirely of WhatsApp’s own making. In September, European, lawmakers designated WhatsApp parent Meta as one of six influential “gatekeeer” companies under its sweeping Digital Markets Act, giving it six months to open its walled garden to others. With just a few weeks to go before that time is up, WhatsApp is detailing how its interoperability with other apps may work.

6 February at 21:18 | Open on mstdn.social
tok 🕊️

@mattburgess It's not that Facebook/Meta suddenly plays nice: They are forced by the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) to do that. Not sure though if that's good or bad.

6 February at 21:38 | Open on social.tchncs.de
kinyutaka

@mattburgess

And all you have to do is share your username and password with them.

6 February at 21:48 | Open on mstdn.social
Martin Be
deactivated ⛔
Marek :verified:

@mattburgess It's not new, just look at Beeper app.

6 February at 22:34 | Open on pol.social
Dawid Rejowski

@kayo77 @mattburgess

It's very new, because it won't require an account from the user and be stable.

6 February at 23:36 | Open on 101010.pl
Ancient Warrior

Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist if you fancy, but with Meta's very shady past with abuse of privacy, I am skeptical as to what Meta means by standards. Standards as in, "give us your backdoor key"(surely there is a wizard behind the red curtain)

///

Space Below the /// is reserved for:

Personal Affiliate Marketing Comment Signature:

Has a wizard invaded your privacy and you want to sue?

howtowinincourt.com?refercode=

6 February at 23:15 | Open on mastodon.social
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

@mattburgess

We seem to be seeing hints by Meta of a strategy to avoid anti-monopoly laws, while still basing their business on mass surveillance and behavior modification: "We don't care what client or protocol you use, as long as your data comes to our servers, from our algorithms and is kept securely away from our competitors."

This would explain Threads, WhatsApp inter-connectivity, and requiring encryption

A real #Google esque strategy.

#Meta #WhatsApp #SurveillanceCapitalism #Threads

7 February at 3:11 | Open on social.tchncs.de
radhitya 🇵🇸🇮🇩
Antanicus
Lasse Gismo - 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇸🇩 :nona:
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