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New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms

127 points by luke2m 5y ago

alexklark 5y ago
So no more security , innovation and progress for EU? Everything including encryption usage and data transfer will be decide by old fat bureaucrats. Forgot to add a pop up window about transferring message to different country and your own 1 billion eurofiats to them.
- midasuni 5y ago
  How about you simply don’t transfer their information, then there’s no worry about getting permission to do so.
egberts1 5y ago
Yeah, and trade certain security for certain freedom?
- supermatt 5y ago
  They could implement EXACTLY the same security requirements via a public-facing API as they do via their existing "private" API. How would that be trading security? lack of obscurity? Clearly they cant be expected to integrate with any 3rd party, so the expectation is that 3rd parties would integrate with them. You can do this at present via their private API (as per pidgin, etc) - but thats against their terms of service. It seems this law will prevent them imposing such terms.
  - egberts1 5y ago
    Karma be damned. Uncomfortable truth must be made cognizant. But they won’t do it exactly given their widely disparate privacy and security model. Unless some kind of an instant messaging standard surfaces. As is, it would become another cat-n-mouse security theater in leveraging one IM provider’s API weakness to gain additional insight of a subscriber using another IM provider’s API.
tester89 5y ago
For those wondering what exactly it means: > (fa) allow end users, business users, providers and potential providers of on line social networking services access to and interoperability with the same industry-standard service features that are available or used in the provision by the gatekeeper of any social networking services; minimum interoperability requirements shall be in accordance with the relevant Union legislation or the industry standard, where applicable, by providing open standards, open protocols, including Application Programming Interface;
Barrin92 5y ago
This is almost too good to actually go through. Protocol transparency, that is to say forcing companies to open up their APIs would be one of the simplest and effective ways to break platform effects and walled gardens. It shouldn't just be limited to messaging. An internet where everyone can built a client against Facebook's API, or Youtube or what have you and users get actual choice and control about how they consume those services would be a big leap forward.
- RenThraysk 5y ago
  Er, WhatsApp is based on Noise for client server protocol, and Signal protocol for peer to peer encryption. Both were open standards before WhatsApp implemented them.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    The problem is less about how known the protocol is and more about whether the platform owner uses its influence to prevent others from implementing said protocol. Even a completely obscure protocol can be reverse-engineered given enough time - in fact if you search on GitHub you can already find a lot of client libraries for proprietary services. The problem is that at the moment the platform owners intentionally detect usage of these alternative clients and ban their users or abuse laws such as copyright to block their development & usage.
  - zahllos 5y ago
    I dunno how to say this but Noise is really a set of possible handshakes with various security guarantees (or, more like, aims, which we are reasonably sure are met), which kinda followed on from X3DH/Signal Protocol. I'm unsure how you got that Noise is a client-server protocol and Signal is peer to peer. When you send a whatsapp message you still send it to WhatsApp servers and the client-server protocol here is probably just TLS. Likewise, when you receive it, probably TLS also. However that message is encrypted "end-to-end" in the sense that the server cannot decrypt the actual message payload on the way. Noise _also_ enables this. Critically this is not peer-to-peer: the clients are still relaying messages via a central server. Peer-to-peer communication in WhatsApp in the network topology sense happens where possible when making Voice and Video calls, as this is probably WebRTC-derived (it is WebRTC in everything else these days), which concretely involves some kind of call signalling, then p2p setup to talk RTP if possible. This is not Signal Protocol or Noise: it is most likely the S in SRTP with key agreement done over the Signal Protocol. In other words, no key ratcheting between voice or video packets. I'm actually not sure if the session key is ever changed for a given call. To make this clear: call setup happens via a central server but the media streams will go from your IP to theirs directly, if possible (or proxied via WhatsApp if not). The reason for doing calls p2p like this is where possible is to reduce latency. This is also, last time I looked, true of Signal. We are good at end-to-end text. We are less good at voice/video, particularly voice/video group calls that might not be p2p-able and rather require the server to do something with the RTP streams. Now, what you're actually missing is that WhatsApp was in its early days based on a fork of ejabberd, the Erlang XMPP Server, with if I understand correctly custom extensions. Thus WhatsApp actually was at some stage somewhat compatible with open standards. We've also kinda been here before. Google Talk used to interoperate with XMPP just fine and at one stage my own XMPP server could talk to my friends on Google Talk and they'd pretty much not notice. I agree however that it would be better to have a new protocol that starts based on end to end key agreement like Signal/Noise, rather than use XMPP. Or perhaps use XMPP _inside_ this protocol. This is because "opt-in" crypto is a disaster that probably has happened. Signal and Noise are also missing what the body of those messages should look like and standards for agreeing for example calls, media transfer and so on, basically all the non-crypto parts.
shafyy 5y ago
This is a step in the right direction. I'm pretty certain that they will make their open APIs a pain in the ass to work with so that nobody actually uses it but they still comply with the law. So, I think further revisions of this law will somehow need to take this into account.
- Isinlor 5y ago
  Digital Markets Act give very broad executive powers to EU Commission to make sure that it will get implemented. They don't need to change law to address issues. Specifically: - article 7: Compliance with obligations for gatekeepers - article 10: Updating obligations for gatekeepers and - article 11: Anti-circumvention
brap 5y ago
This is going to make it difficult for small startups to compete.
- m4lvin 5y ago
  Why? (Note that the idea is to force the big players to allow interop with small ones, but small startups are not forced to do anything.)
- cube2222 5y ago
  This only applies to companies with a market capitalization of at least 75 billion euro.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  On the contrary it is literally the only way to beat the big platforms that already have a billion users.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Since right now it's so easy to compete with WhatsApp? On the contrary, the whole point of this law is to make it not just easy, but even possible for alternative messaging providers to compete.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  What's the reasoning for that? I think the opposite is true, because open protocols allow a startup to interact with existing users, without needing to overcome the hard barrier of network effects. Closed protocols only help entrenched groups, and are actively harmful to both users and startups.
dalbasal 5y ago
It's hard to be optimistic about this. Regulators, lawmakers and courts are working with very blunt instruments and making up for it by being gentle. Whether or not they succeed at improving choice and reducing centralised power over comms is up to dumb luck, mostly.
AniseAbyss 5y ago
This would be great for consumers but not so great for Apple and Facebook. They want people into their locked down walled garden.
Sakos 5y ago
I miss the days when I could fire up Pidgin (or Gaim when I started using it) and instantly connect to every IM service I ever needed. Hopefully this is a step back towards that.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  Same here. That's why I paid to use beeper. It's amazing to have all my chats in one app again. (Not affiliated just love the experience)
  - bravura 5y ago
    Could you please talk about the experience with Beeper? I always worried that I would get my accounts banned or similar. What do you love, what is missing? Can you organize the chats?
    - kilroy123 5y ago
      I too have been worried about that! They claim they'll offer a self-hosted version soon. I'd feel a lot more comfortable going that route so my IP is often from the same place. Right now everything is running on their servers with god knows what IP addresses and from where. So far I haven't been banned but I have had to reset my Facebook password once. Instagram suddenly stopped working and I had to reconnect a few times. So far WhatsApp is ok. IMHO the iOS app is close to useless and I stopped using it. The desktop app is where it's at and I'm only using that for now.
  - curiousgal 5y ago
    I thought Whatsapp user terms phorbid users from using third-party clients. People were banned for that.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  Agreed. It genuinely feels like my online experience degraded over the course of the past decade or so, because I am less willing to join a specific walled garden. And then I remember that this is by design. The winner takes his/hers social circle to the winner garden.
mnd999 5y ago
This would basically kill WhatsApp on iOS. Which is fine by me.
tluyben2 5y ago
Just force monopolistic/abusive/anti-competitive companies to expose API's ; it's not a stretch; they did it for banks (psd2) and it's great for consumers and companies alike. Do it for everything; open systems make the world better. And they can still be monetized; it's not like forcing everyone to open source everything. Edit: more subtle choice of words to indicate what I meant
- grishka 5y ago
  Most social media companies' businesses models rely on having complete control over the presentation of content. Forcing them to allow third-party client apps would ruin that, and it's going to be beautiful.
  - parkingrift 5y ago
    Complete control of the presentation of content, editorializing said content, and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t allowed. And they also still don’t want to be treated as publishers. It’s hard for me to muster up even the smallest amount of sympathy for these vampires. I expect this will take a decade to shake out as US tech firms work tirelessly to protect their spyware walled garden models.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      You’re severely overreacting. These features you so passionately hate are an important part of the reason why the general population is using the apps, and the business model of the large majority of chat apps is definitely not ‘spyware’. What’s going to happen, if this ever goes through, is that the networks will open some kind of api so outsiders can send and be sent basic messages. And you will never be happy using it because you’ll always look like an outsider. And there is no way to fix this because a big draw of these networks is that they keep adding new features and they are not in the old api so you can’t use them. And of course it’s going to be a big source of spam so users will get the ability to block the outside from sending messages to them, which means you can’t reach half the people you want.
sonicggg 5y ago
Why did we as consumers accept this? I remember back when MSN/Windows Live Messenger used to be one of the most popular options out there. Even though I used Ubuntu, I could still chat with my friends through the Pidgin messenger. This was all possible through the XMPP interface, which still exists by the way. It's not just that these new messaging platforms are adding no extra value, they are creating worse experiences, and we're buying into it. You now have to install half a dozen messaging apps just to keep up (WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, etc.) . And now we're suddenly talking about reinventing the wheel.
- croes 5y ago
  Because SMS was expensive
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- oarsinsync 5y ago
  > Why did we as consumers accept this? Short term thinking and focus on new shiny features over long term sustainability. It's a pattern we see repeated in many aspects of society, not just messaging. Combine this with network effects and it ceases to matter that a minority of people have the time and interest to think about the long term, the majority have already made the decision, and your choices are to either be left out, or participate. It's frustrating, but it's one of those things when a large enough sample of the population are living lives which have much bigger problems than messenger lock-ins. tl;dr: stickers
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  How easy is it to send full quality videos and pictures via XMPP? I feel like the main difference from my Pidgin days and today is that these days there is a metric ton of large media files being sent around.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Easy, on some clients/with some servers. These days they do it the same way as most other platforms, by uploading the media to a web server. It took the ecosystem a while to catch up to that though, and there are plenty of clients out there that still don’t support it.
amelius 5y ago
Would it also force Facebook to open up its Events section, so events become available to the outside world?
martin_a 5y ago
Duplicate?!? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567
tomrod 5y ago
Yes! Like another comment mentioned I'd love a return of pidgin. Further, the law should specificy that the protocol allows E2EE, and we have traction.
- igravious 5y ago
  Double yes! I had thought for the longest time that a Linux-like open landscape would develop for messaging and social. I no longer believe this is going to be the case. I truly believe we are at a Standard Oil / AT&T moment (as documented would happen by Tim Wu in the Master Switch[1][2]) There is no conceivable way other than politically/legally that big tech will of their own volition lower their drawbridges to span their moats. This needs to happen. Mandate interop and federation please. [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194417/the-master-switch-by-tim-wu/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194417/the-master-s... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij76dh_340w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij76dh_340w
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Matrix would be a nice approach, if not for weird edge cases like spamming IRC (if that still happens).
- pabs3 5y ago
  Pidgin is still here and supports modern protocols via plugins. https://pidgin.im/plugins/ https://pidgin.im/plugins/
RenThraysk 5y ago
Is this an indirect attack on the encryption... seems to be.
- sneak 5y ago
  iMessage and WhatsApp both already have encryption backdoors that escrow the endpoint secret keys or plaintext to cloud services, undermining the end-to-end encryption. That ship has sailed.
  - RenThraysk 5y ago
    But future messaging apps shouldn't be getting less secure.
  - dm319 5y ago
    I wasn't aware of this, do you have a link for me to read more?
    - sneak 5y ago
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi-complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv... iCloud Backup was introduced in iOS 5, released in 2011. It escrows either message plaintext or device secret keys (depending on OS version and configuration) to Apple, encrypted with Apple keys (non-e2e) and readable to Apple (and the FBI and others, some of whom access the data without probable cause or a warrant under FAA Section 702). WhatsApp backup backs up chat plaintext to cloud services (I think Google is the default), also non-e2e and readable to the cloud storage service (who often shares it with government snoops without a search warrant, also under FAA Section 702). They added an e2e option late last year but it doesn't matter if you turn it on because none of the people you chat with are likely to have it enabled (so all of your chats will be backed up in plaintext from the other end).
      - xoa 5y ago
teekert 5y ago
This annoys me. Rather than robbing Moxie of his vision and forcing Meta to break their business model, why do governments not just lead by example? Start using Matrix, we all know that the signup process could be easier (among many other things), throw some money and devs at the project with that specific goal. Start offering services over Matrix. Public money, public code. The whole world benefits.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  Why would requiring interoperability rob Moxie of his vision?
  - teekert 5y ago
    He indicated multiple times that he does not want other (third party) clients, does not want the server to be open and federated. Let him have it, it works for many people. Imagine you were him and you are getting issues filed from people using services the government forced you to build, or were even build by others but forced on your once clean solution. I'd say "screw you guys, I'm going home" (Build your own solution). And I'd agree with him. Where would it end?
    - stingraycharles 5y ago
      The same can be said about WhatsApp et al. I’m going to bet that Meta also indicated they don’t want other third party clients. From my point of view, the advantages of opening up these platforms outweigh the disadvantages for those who don’t like that. The whole idea of this type of regulation is that it tries to do what’s best for the consumer, and the market as a whole, not not necessarily for the businesses behind it.
      - teekert 5y ago
        And then we keep Moxie as a slave forcing him to get motivated to implement all this? Or will the government cease control of the code? Stop Moxie from Forking, then tell people to stay on the government branch? And the arguments hold for Meta too if you ask me. WhatsApp is not a public service. It was not build (or in this case bought later on) with our interests at the top of the priority list. If we want public services with the public's interest at heart, we have to build those services, or sponsor those. Not take them from companies. In this case we already have a nice solution in the from of Matrix. What are you suggesting?
theshrike79 5y ago
Would this also require Signal to provide an open client API for messaging by 3rd party clients?
flenserboy 5y ago
Ah, a new tack in the effort to break encryption.
macinjosh 5y ago
Step 1: Your encrypted chat service used by activists must work with other platforms by law. Step 2: So... the encryption your application uses doesn't work well with other platforms. Step 3: Everyone must use this one kind of encryption for interoperability with our tracking ser... I mean other platforms. Step 4. Hey, look at all the stuff these activists are talking about. Step 5. Gulag for the activists
pier25 5y ago
The most interesting part of the law is that users will be able to choose their own browser. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22994234/eu-antitrust-legislation-dma-digital-markets-act-details https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22994234/eu-antitrust-leg...
kkfx 5y ago
IMVHO communication protocols of anything public MUST be open, peering MUST be allowed as a general policy. It's not a matter of scale: communications exists to communicate, not to create walled gardens.

127 points by luke2m 5y ago

So no more security , innovation and progress for EU? Everything including encryption usage and data transfer will be decide by old fat bureaucrats. Forgot to add a pop up window about transferring message to different country and your own 1 billion eurofiats to them.

midasuni 5y ago
How about you simply don’t transfer their information, then there’s no worry about getting permission to do so.

egberts1 5y ago

Yeah, and trade certain security for certain freedom?

supermatt 5y ago
They could implement EXACTLY the same security requirements via a public-facing API as they do via their existing "private" API. How would that be trading security? lack of obscurity? Clearly they cant be expected to integrate with any 3rd party, so the expectation is that 3rd parties would integrate with them. You can do this at present via their private API (as per pidgin, etc) - but thats against their terms of service. It seems this law will prevent them imposing such terms.
- egberts1 5y ago
  Karma be damned. Uncomfortable truth must be made cognizant. But they won’t do it exactly given their widely disparate privacy and security model. Unless some kind of an instant messaging standard surfaces. As is, it would become another cat-n-mouse security theater in leveraging one IM provider’s API weakness to gain additional insight of a subscriber using another IM provider’s API.

tester89 5y ago

For those wondering what exactly it means: > (fa) allow end users, business users, providers and potential providers of on line social networking services access to and interoperability with the same industry-standard service features that are available or used in the provision by the gatekeeper of any social networking services; minimum interoperability requirements shall be in accordance with the relevant Union legislation or the industry standard, where applicable, by providing open standards, open protocols, including Application Programming Interface;

Barrin92 5y ago

This is almost too good to actually go through. Protocol transparency, that is to say forcing companies to open up their APIs would be one of the simplest and effective ways to break platform effects and walled gardens. It shouldn't just be limited to messaging. An internet where everyone can built a client against Facebook's API, or Youtube or what have you and users get actual choice and control about how they consume those services would be a big leap forward.

RenThraysk 5y ago
Er, WhatsApp is based on Noise for client server protocol, and Signal protocol for peer to peer encryption. Both were open standards before WhatsApp implemented them.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The problem is less about how known the protocol is and more about whether the platform owner uses its influence to prevent others from implementing said protocol. Even a completely obscure protocol can be reverse-engineered given enough time - in fact if you search on GitHub you can already find a lot of client libraries for proprietary services. The problem is that at the moment the platform owners intentionally detect usage of these alternative clients and ban their users or abuse laws such as copyright to block their development & usage.
- zahllos 5y ago
  I dunno how to say this but Noise is really a set of possible handshakes with various security guarantees (or, more like, aims, which we are reasonably sure are met), which kinda followed on from X3DH/Signal Protocol. I'm unsure how you got that Noise is a client-server protocol and Signal is peer to peer. When you send a whatsapp message you still send it to WhatsApp servers and the client-server protocol here is probably just TLS. Likewise, when you receive it, probably TLS also. However that message is encrypted "end-to-end" in the sense that the server cannot decrypt the actual message payload on the way. Noise _also_ enables this. Critically this is not peer-to-peer: the clients are still relaying messages via a central server. Peer-to-peer communication in WhatsApp in the network topology sense happens where possible when making Voice and Video calls, as this is probably WebRTC-derived (it is WebRTC in everything else these days), which concretely involves some kind of call signalling, then p2p setup to talk RTP if possible. This is not Signal Protocol or Noise: it is most likely the S in SRTP with key agreement done over the Signal Protocol. In other words, no key ratcheting between voice or video packets. I'm actually not sure if the session key is ever changed for a given call. To make this clear: call setup happens via a central server but the media streams will go from your IP to theirs directly, if possible (or proxied via WhatsApp if not). The reason for doing calls p2p like this is where possible is to reduce latency. This is also, last time I looked, true of Signal. We are good at end-to-end text. We are less good at voice/video, particularly voice/video group calls that might not be p2p-able and rather require the server to do something with the RTP streams. Now, what you're actually missing is that WhatsApp was in its early days based on a fork of ejabberd, the Erlang XMPP Server, with if I understand correctly custom extensions. Thus WhatsApp actually was at some stage somewhat compatible with open standards. We've also kinda been here before. Google Talk used to interoperate with XMPP just fine and at one stage my own XMPP server could talk to my friends on Google Talk and they'd pretty much not notice. I agree however that it would be better to have a new protocol that starts based on end to end key agreement like Signal/Noise, rather than use XMPP. Or perhaps use XMPP _inside_ this protocol. This is because "opt-in" crypto is a disaster that probably has happened. Signal and Noise are also missing what the body of those messages should look like and standards for agreeing for example calls, media transfer and so on, basically all the non-crypto parts.

shafyy 5y ago

This is a step in the right direction. I'm pretty certain that they will make their open APIs a pain in the ass to work with so that nobody actually uses it but they still comply with the law. So, I think further revisions of this law will somehow need to take this into account.

Isinlor 5y ago
Digital Markets Act give very broad executive powers to EU Commission to make sure that it will get implemented. They don't need to change law to address issues. Specifically: - article 7: Compliance with obligations for gatekeepers - article 10: Updating obligations for gatekeepers and - article 11: Anti-circumvention

brap 5y ago

This is going to make it difficult for small startups to compete.

m4lvin 5y ago
Why? (Note that the idea is to force the big players to allow interop with small ones, but small startups are not forced to do anything.)
cube2222 5y ago
This only applies to companies with a market capitalization of at least 75 billion euro.
AniseAbyss 5y ago
On the contrary it is literally the only way to beat the big platforms that already have a billion users.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Since right now it's so easy to compete with WhatsApp? On the contrary, the whole point of this law is to make it not just easy, but even possible for alternative messaging providers to compete.
MereInterest 5y ago
What's the reasoning for that? I think the opposite is true, because open protocols allow a startup to interact with existing users, without needing to overcome the hard barrier of network effects. Closed protocols only help entrenched groups, and are actively harmful to both users and startups.

dalbasal 5y ago

It's hard to be optimistic about this. Regulators, lawmakers and courts are working with very blunt instruments and making up for it by being gentle. Whether or not they succeed at improving choice and reducing centralised power over comms is up to dumb luck, mostly.

AniseAbyss 5y ago

This would be great for consumers but not so great for Apple and Facebook. They want people into their locked down walled garden.

Sakos 5y ago

I miss the days when I could fire up Pidgin (or Gaim when I started using it) and instantly connect to every IM service I ever needed. Hopefully this is a step back towards that.

kilroy123 5y ago
Same here. That's why I paid to use beeper. It's amazing to have all my chats in one app again. (Not affiliated just love the experience)
- bravura 5y ago
  Could you please talk about the experience with Beeper? I always worried that I would get my accounts banned or similar. What do you love, what is missing? Can you organize the chats?
  - kilroy123 5y ago
    I too have been worried about that! They claim they'll offer a self-hosted version soon. I'd feel a lot more comfortable going that route so my IP is often from the same place. Right now everything is running on their servers with god knows what IP addresses and from where. So far I haven't been banned but I have had to reset my Facebook password once. Instagram suddenly stopped working and I had to reconnect a few times. So far WhatsApp is ok. IMHO the iOS app is close to useless and I stopped using it. The desktop app is where it's at and I'm only using that for now.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  I thought Whatsapp user terms phorbid users from using third-party clients. People were banned for that.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
Agreed. It genuinely feels like my online experience degraded over the course of the past decade or so, because I am less willing to join a specific walled garden. And then I remember that this is by design. The winner takes his/hers social circle to the winner garden.

mnd999 5y ago

This would basically kill WhatsApp on iOS. Which is fine by me.

tluyben2 5y ago

Just force monopolistic/abusive/anti-competitive companies to expose API's ; it's not a stretch; they did it for banks (psd2) and it's great for consumers and companies alike. Do it for everything; open systems make the world better. And they can still be monetized; it's not like forcing everyone to open source everything. Edit: more subtle choice of words to indicate what I meant

grishka 5y ago
Most social media companies' businesses models rely on having complete control over the presentation of content. Forcing them to allow third-party client apps would ruin that, and it's going to be beautiful.
- parkingrift 5y ago
  Complete control of the presentation of content, editorializing said content, and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t allowed. And they also still don’t want to be treated as publishers. It’s hard for me to muster up even the smallest amount of sympathy for these vampires. I expect this will take a decade to shake out as US tech firms work tirelessly to protect their spyware walled garden models.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    You’re severely overreacting. These features you so passionately hate are an important part of the reason why the general population is using the apps, and the business model of the large majority of chat apps is definitely not ‘spyware’. What’s going to happen, if this ever goes through, is that the networks will open some kind of api so outsiders can send and be sent basic messages. And you will never be happy using it because you’ll always look like an outsider. And there is no way to fix this because a big draw of these networks is that they keep adding new features and they are not in the old api so you can’t use them. And of course it’s going to be a big source of spam so users will get the ability to block the outside from sending messages to them, which means you can’t reach half the people you want.

sonicggg 5y ago

Why did we as consumers accept this? I remember back when MSN/Windows Live Messenger used to be one of the most popular options out there. Even though I used Ubuntu, I could still chat with my friends through the Pidgin messenger. This was all possible through the XMPP interface, which still exists by the way. It's not just that these new messaging platforms are adding no extra value, they are creating worse experiences, and we're buying into it. You now have to install half a dozen messaging apps just to keep up (WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, etc.) . And now we're suddenly talking about reinventing the wheel.

croes 5y ago
Because SMS was expensive
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
oarsinsync 5y ago
> Why did we as consumers accept this? Short term thinking and focus on new shiny features over long term sustainability. It's a pattern we see repeated in many aspects of society, not just messaging. Combine this with network effects and it ceases to matter that a minority of people have the time and interest to think about the long term, the majority have already made the decision, and your choices are to either be left out, or participate. It's frustrating, but it's one of those things when a large enough sample of the population are living lives which have much bigger problems than messenger lock-ins. tl;dr: stickers
lotsofpulp 5y ago
How easy is it to send full quality videos and pictures via XMPP? I feel like the main difference from my Pidgin days and today is that these days there is a metric ton of large media files being sent around.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Easy, on some clients/with some servers. These days they do it the same way as most other platforms, by uploading the media to a web server. It took the ecosystem a while to catch up to that though, and there are plenty of clients out there that still don’t support it.

amelius 5y ago

Would it also force Facebook to open up its Events section, so events become available to the outside world?

martin_a 5y ago

Duplicate?!? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567

tomrod 5y ago

Yes! Like another comment mentioned I'd love a return of pidgin. Further, the law should specificy that the protocol allows E2EE, and we have traction.

igravious 5y ago
Double yes! I had thought for the longest time that a Linux-like open landscape would develop for messaging and social. I no longer believe this is going to be the case. I truly believe we are at a Standard Oil / AT&T moment (as documented would happen by Tim Wu in the Master Switch[1][2]) There is no conceivable way other than politically/legally that big tech will of their own volition lower their drawbridges to span their moats. This needs to happen. Mandate interop and federation please. [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194417/the-master-switch-by-tim-wu/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194417/the-master-s... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij76dh_340w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij76dh_340w
- tomrod 5y ago
  Matrix would be a nice approach, if not for weird edge cases like spamming IRC (if that still happens).
pabs3 5y ago
Pidgin is still here and supports modern protocols via plugins. https://pidgin.im/plugins/ https://pidgin.im/plugins/

RenThraysk 5y ago

Is this an indirect attack on the encryption... seems to be.

sneak 5y ago
iMessage and WhatsApp both already have encryption backdoors that escrow the endpoint secret keys or plaintext to cloud services, undermining the end-to-end encryption. That ship has sailed.
- RenThraysk 5y ago
  But future messaging apps shouldn't be getting less secure.
- dm319 5y ago
  I wasn't aware of this, do you have a link for me to read more?
  - sneak 5y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi-complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv... iCloud Backup was introduced in iOS 5, released in 2011. It escrows either message plaintext or device secret keys (depending on OS version and configuration) to Apple, encrypted with Apple keys (non-e2e) and readable to Apple (and the FBI and others, some of whom access the data without probable cause or a warrant under FAA Section 702). WhatsApp backup backs up chat plaintext to cloud services (I think Google is the default), also non-e2e and readable to the cloud storage service (who often shares it with government snoops without a search warrant, also under FAA Section 702). They added an e2e option late last year but it doesn't matter if you turn it on because none of the people you chat with are likely to have it enabled (so all of your chats will be backed up in plaintext from the other end).
    - xoa 5y ago

teekert 5y ago

This annoys me. Rather than robbing Moxie of his vision and forcing Meta to break their business model, why do governments not just lead by example? Start using Matrix, we all know that the signup process could be easier (among many other things), throw some money and devs at the project with that specific goal. Start offering services over Matrix. Public money, public code. The whole world benefits.

stingraycharles 5y ago
Why would requiring interoperability rob Moxie of his vision?
- teekert 5y ago
  He indicated multiple times that he does not want other (third party) clients, does not want the server to be open and federated. Let him have it, it works for many people. Imagine you were him and you are getting issues filed from people using services the government forced you to build, or were even build by others but forced on your once clean solution. I'd say "screw you guys, I'm going home" (Build your own solution). And I'd agree with him. Where would it end?
  - stingraycharles 5y ago
    The same can be said about WhatsApp et al. I’m going to bet that Meta also indicated they don’t want other third party clients. From my point of view, the advantages of opening up these platforms outweigh the disadvantages for those who don’t like that. The whole idea of this type of regulation is that it tries to do what’s best for the consumer, and the market as a whole, not not necessarily for the businesses behind it.
    - teekert 5y ago
      And then we keep Moxie as a slave forcing him to get motivated to implement all this? Or will the government cease control of the code? Stop Moxie from Forking, then tell people to stay on the government branch? And the arguments hold for Meta too if you ask me. WhatsApp is not a public service. It was not build (or in this case bought later on) with our interests at the top of the priority list. If we want public services with the public's interest at heart, we have to build those services, or sponsor those. Not take them from companies. In this case we already have a nice solution in the from of Matrix. What are you suggesting?

theshrike79 5y ago

Would this also require Signal to provide an open client API for messaging by 3rd party clients?

flenserboy 5y ago

Ah, a new tack in the effort to break encryption.

macinjosh 5y ago

Step 1: Your encrypted chat service used by activists must work with other platforms by law. Step 2: So... the encryption your application uses doesn't work well with other platforms. Step 3: Everyone must use this one kind of encryption for interoperability with our tracking ser... I mean other platforms. Step 4. Hey, look at all the stuff these activists are talking about. Step 5. Gulag for the activists

pier25 5y ago

The most interesting part of the law is that users will be able to choose their own browser. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22994234/eu-antitrust-legislation-dma-digital-markets-act-details https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22994234/eu-antitrust-leg...

kkfx 5y ago

IMVHO communication protocols of anything public MUST be open, peering MUST be allowed as a general policy. It's not a matter of scale: communications exists to communicate, not to create walled gardens.