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EU is going to require interoperability between messaging platforms
- jsnell 5y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30800576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30800576
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway290 5y agoThis one is less political and focuses on tech specifics, and this outlet actually talked to a parliament representative whom they are quoting.
- sylware 5y agoThey forgot the web: interop with noscript/basic (x)html browsers (browsers which are _not_ google(blink/geeko) or apple(webkit) based).
- qualudeheart 5y agoExtremely good. One of the best methods to reign in the tech monopolists.
- amelius 5y agoBasically what the telecommunications act of 1996 was meant to do. https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996 https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996
- rpadovani 5y agoThe interoperability is lovely, looking forward to having just one app! > And among the restrictions are stipulations that gatekeepers cannot: > [...] > require app developers to use certain services (such as payment systems or identity providers) in order to be listed in app stores. This is a giant blow for Apple. I am very curious to see how and if this will be implemented, and enforced!
- anaccountexists 5y agoIsn’t it… the opposite of a blow to Apple? If there interoperability, why would I ever use anything than my phone’s default messaging app? (Especially if E2E encryption is a requirement, which it looks like it is) This is just regulatory capture cementing the OS owners above app developers.
- ryukafalz 5y agoIt means that even if you still use the default iOS messaging app, your contacts can use other messaging apps, rather than being locked into iMessage and therefore the Apple ecosystem. It breaks down some of the barriers to competition for new mobile OSes and messaging apps. This is a good thing.
- amelius 5y agoYeah, I have been effectively banned from video chatting with my family, since they all use FaceTime.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoBecause some users might like a different messaging app better than the default one?
- playpause 5y agoThe comment you’re replying to is about app stores, not messaging.
- dmitriid 5y agoMessages are big in the US. But in Europe I've seen people using anything but Messages. So Europe will happily continue using other messengers, but now in a more interoperable way, hopefully.
- dmarchand90 5y agoAgreed, this seems like good and sensible legislation. Imagine having multiple telephone systems, or "internets".
- asfdasfasdfsafs 5y agoHow would end to end encryption work? Would forcing signal/whatsapp to inter op with telegram/imessage basically break end to end encryption?
- bretpiatt 5y agoPlenty of interoperable encryption systems, they'd just have to use and support one or more such as GPG, PGP, IPSec, etc.[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography
- mvanbaak 5y agoIt wont break it. You can send and receive the messages. To decrypt it, you will need the same app as the sender used. Basically how it works with email. If you pgp encrypt the message and the receiver only has smime at the moment, they wont be able to read your message. This .eu thing is about platforms providing an api to connect and exchange data. It's not about what data etc can and cannot be used.
- hprotagonist 5y agoI can’t help but see this as a stalking horse for an end to E2E encrypted communications. “if we can’t scare them with pedos and terrorists, enrage them with monopolist bashing; we’ll get to spy on everyone again either way!”
- lloeki 5y agoFrom TFA: > “The first basic messaging features will be user-to-user messages, video and voice calls, as well as basic file transfer (photos, videos), and then over time, more features such as group chats will come,” noted Schwab. “Everything must be end-to-end encrypted.” (emphasis mine)
- speedgoose 5y agoEnd to end encrypted messaging is not incompatible with interoperability.
- kitkat_new 5y agonot really true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30805015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30805015
- ergonaught 5y agoEU continues to demonstrate willful and wild delusion regarding technology. “Big Tech” and “Ad Tech” need reigning in, for sure, but the EU seems intent upon finding the worst possible means of understanding a problem then mandating the worst possible solutions to their misunderstandings. They’re somehow even worse than the USA’s legal/judicial systems in this respect. Insane.
- warent 5y agothis is not fair in the slightest. At worst this will make for a fascinating and insightful experiment that will inform many future policy decisions
- dmitriid 5y agoHN: all these closed silos are bad, they should be open EU: mandates that at least a part of the silos such as messaging should be open HN: no, not like that
- kogir 5y agoI’ll wait to see the details but modern messaging apps are super complex and have tons of features. The odds of a third party implementing them all (and correctly) is low. Instead it’ll be like how iMessage “interoperates” with SMS, where non-native users are shunned for breaking everything for the group.
- endisneigh 5y agoI’d be surprised if this isn’t what happens
- simulate-me 5y agoI don’t think apps will need to implement each others’ features. Rather, apps will need to expose external APIs so that others could implement their functionality if desired.
- rektide 5y agoMicrosoft having to document SMB protocol & to an extend Active Directory protocols after losing the legal fight with Samba project[1] set forth a fairly hopeful future to me, a what might be. SMB is basically a worst case of difficult to tame protocols. A sea of ancient crufty bizarre interlocking protocols, which Samba had already done good work reversing. But after enormous enormous bad blood, bad press, and a nearly billion dollar EU antitrust fine looming, Microsft went & did the not-immoral(court mandated thing & documented the protocol & stopped anti-competitive cutting out others. Now hypothetically others could come and participate too. The idea that every app does messaging perfectly is indeed dubious. But the iMessage reducing outsiders to bit players, shunned, with shit experiences & not allowed to improve, is exactly the sort of monopolization anti-trust hellscape that seems like is getting turned back here. Fear over imperfection to me is way way way way down the chain of concerns to the blatantly anti-competitive, ever-isolating, closed off intranets of proprietary, big player apps engaged in high stakes vicious anti-competitive practices, like Apple is so notoriously & vicuously known for. It might not got smooth at first but progress will be possible & things will improve quickly from there. Market forces can reassert themselves, once interioeration begins. It's gonna be great. Dont let a fear of openness & love of the giant obstruct us for yet more decades, please. The future & possibility is too valuable to squander, too valuable to let us be divided & sundered like we have been by these vast duopolies & isolated fragmented partial un-inter-networks. [1] https://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110525-01.en.html https://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110525-01.en.html
- vessenes 5y agoIt’s hard for me to understand how this can be implemented at all as described by the regulator quotes in the article. The regulators make some pretty strong promises that I just don’t think are possible - “E2E Multigroup messaging across platforms will come soon.” Unless E2E means “Device -> Telegram bridge server which decrypts -> facebook messenger bridge which reencrypts -> facebook messenger client app which decrypts” Then this regulator imagines all “large” messaging companies are either going to maintain separate crypto libraries for each messaging target on the ‘big company’ list, or that they are all going to use the same E2E encryption tech. Both of those ideas are fantasies; not possible in the slightest for a combination of technical and regulatory reasons. If on the other hand, they are imagining that they’ll force large messaging companies to implement non-broken, open APIs for interaction with their messaging services, then I would love that, Apple especially. Actually, WeChat especially, then Apple. It would be a significant change in model for FB and Apple to allow devs in, and a massive change for WeChat.
- moltke 5y ago
- mvanbaak 5y agowechat isn't used that much in europe, so they will simply ignore it and dont do any business in europe. I can see other non european companies doing the same, and I'm not totally sure the outcome is in the best interest of the people. But time will tell, let's wait before we jump to conclusions.
- mjevans 5y agoWill this mean that E.G. search engines and other account-less tools and users can see all pages and threads that currently require a generic account but no paid or otherwise similarly individual whitelisting? Such as some Facebook user's public message wall, or a Twitter account's NSFW posts? (Twitter recently went login-wall for these, rather than click-through hump.)
- drorwell 5y ago
- szczepano 5y agofirst step to enforce identity across different messaging platforms, goodbye anonymity
- Markoff 5y agodupe and all they have to do is provide SMS feature
- danhab99 5y agoWhy can't we get these kinds of policies in the US? Is it because Europeans are banding together to poke at us? I feel like they're doing this against us, even though we don't profit much from these tech companies bc of their tax dodging. Who are they winning against? Are we winning? Whats going on?