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The EU is planning to require big online messaging services to be interoperable. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22995431/european-union-digital-markets-act

The EU is planning to require big online messaging services to be interoperable. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22995431/european-union-digital-markets-act-imessage-whatsapp-interoperable https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22995431/european-union-d... This would solve it. Then you could simply use a single app. This is a political thing. So, vote for it, talk to the politicians.

bhawks 4y ago
Why is this a 'political thing'? Did I miss the campaign to define SQL? Of the one to specify the x86 ISA? Perhaps they should merge the arm and x86 architectures, they're both CPUs right? This feels very far away from a 'political thing'.
- loudmax 4y ago
  Politicians shouldn't be in charge of defining interoperability standards. But politicians can mandate that companies be interoperable. Regulation is hard. This doesn't mean that rules shouldn't exist.
  - bhawks 4y ago
    Just because they can doesn't mean they should. Should they mandate that video game platforms be interoperable? What about mandating that every company produces apps that interoperate with windows Mac Linux and mobile.
    - albertzeyer 4y ago
      Difficult question indeed. And that even leaving aside the technical questions. But wouldn't it be nice? Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, all together? Or always cross platform apps? Is there any real benefit for the user that they are not interoperable?
      - bhawks 4y ago
        Saying wouldn't it be nice without proposing how such a scheme would work without picking winners and losers is naive. The devil is in the details as they say. Ubitiquious cross platform apps, sure! Just 3x your development team size - will your app still make sense to make with those costs? Oh don't worry - just replatform to a cross platform toolkit (and stop working on new features for 6-12months and retrain the entire team). I just don't see why it's worth bringing the blunt hammer of government intervention here - let alone a reasonable path for regulation implementation.
    - dingleberry420 4y ago
      It'd be more likely they'd mandate Mac, Linux and Mobile to all support a common app format. Which they already kind of do, the web.
endisneigh 4y ago
I don't see how this is possible if you also have E2EE. Great example is email encryption via PGP. It exists, it's used (rarely) in some cases, but it's so poorly implemented to the point of being useless unless
- AndersSandvik 4y ago
  It will be possible because the user will have the encryption key
- dingleberry420 4y ago
  Why should this be an issue at all? It's my account, I should know the encryption key & algorithm. Any open source app can then implement this.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    How exactly would you implement an interoperable E2EE group chat app where you can arbitrarily add and remove people like with iMessage? The EU law linked does not actually recommend anything specifically, just vaguely states interoperability being a goal. Certain apps will have certain functionality. Unless you're willing to constrain the functionality it's not really possible. Right now everyone could already use email which supports encryption. They don't, though.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - vageli 4y ago
      > How exactly would you implement an interoperable E2EE group chat app where you can arbitrarily add and remove people like with iMessage? Doesn't the matrix chat app allow for this? Might be useful to learn how they do it if this is of interest. https://matrix.org/docs/guides/end-to-end-encryption-implementation-guide https://matrix.org/docs/guides/end-to-end-encryption-impleme...
    - OJFord 4y ago
nickjj 4y ago
Ah, history is mostly repeating itself (minus the need for government intervention ~20 years ago). We had similar issues in the late 90s / early 2000s with ICQ, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Chat, etc.. Apps like https://www.pidgin.im/ https://www.pidgin.im/ existed to let you check everything within 1 app because all of these apps spoke the same protocol or close enough that things mostly worked.
- albertzeyer 4y ago
  This is a bit different though. It's one thing to allow independent applications to use the protocol and service, like Pidgin and others. And also many services did not like this and repeatedly changed their proprietary custom protocol to make this difficult. It's another thing to be interoperable between services. Then you could continue to use only one service but still be able to talk to people on other services.
  - nickjj 4y ago
    Yeah that's true, in the Pidgin case you were still signing up for each service independently. Pidgin let you communicate through its app instead of the service provider's app. None of the service providers had data about the others. I'm not sure how they plan to make things fully interoperable. Wouldn't that mean every chat app would need a complete chat history for every user multiplied by every chat app out there? Or instead they introduce a shared parent company / govt. entity where all chat messages are sent through, stored and pushed to users. Time to bust out the tin foil hats!
    - Cerium 4y ago
      I think you could make it work with only some username namespace. Eg: whatsapp.cerium vs fb.cerium. Facebook would forward messages to whatsapp usernames and vice versa.
brightball 4y ago
Honestly, those apps should just expose themselves via email and be done with it.
t-3 4y ago
Wouldn't that basically set protocols in stone and block any future improvement or research? Standards are generally good, but I can't see legally mandated protocols as anything but guaranteed ossification.

bhawks 4y ago

Why is this a 'political thing'? Did I miss the campaign to define SQL? Of the one to specify the x86 ISA? Perhaps they should merge the arm and x86 architectures, they're both CPUs right? This feels very far away from a 'political thing'.

loudmax 4y ago
Politicians shouldn't be in charge of defining interoperability standards. But politicians can mandate that companies be interoperable. Regulation is hard. This doesn't mean that rules shouldn't exist.
- bhawks 4y ago
  Just because they can doesn't mean they should. Should they mandate that video game platforms be interoperable? What about mandating that every company produces apps that interoperate with windows Mac Linux and mobile.
  - albertzeyer 4y ago
    Difficult question indeed. And that even leaving aside the technical questions. But wouldn't it be nice? Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, all together? Or always cross platform apps? Is there any real benefit for the user that they are not interoperable?
    - bhawks 4y ago
      Saying wouldn't it be nice without proposing how such a scheme would work without picking winners and losers is naive. The devil is in the details as they say. Ubitiquious cross platform apps, sure! Just 3x your development team size - will your app still make sense to make with those costs? Oh don't worry - just replatform to a cross platform toolkit (and stop working on new features for 6-12months and retrain the entire team). I just don't see why it's worth bringing the blunt hammer of government intervention here - let alone a reasonable path for regulation implementation.
  - dingleberry420 4y ago
    It'd be more likely they'd mandate Mac, Linux and Mobile to all support a common app format. Which they already kind of do, the web.

endisneigh 4y ago

I don't see how this is possible if you also have E2EE. Great example is email encryption via PGP. It exists, it's used (rarely) in some cases, but it's so poorly implemented to the point of being useless unless

AndersSandvik 4y ago
It will be possible because the user will have the encryption key
dingleberry420 4y ago
Why should this be an issue at all? It's my account, I should know the encryption key & algorithm. Any open source app can then implement this.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  How exactly would you implement an interoperable E2EE group chat app where you can arbitrarily add and remove people like with iMessage? The EU law linked does not actually recommend anything specifically, just vaguely states interoperability being a goal. Certain apps will have certain functionality. Unless you're willing to constrain the functionality it's not really possible. Right now everyone could already use email which supports encryption. They don't, though.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - vageli 4y ago
    > How exactly would you implement an interoperable E2EE group chat app where you can arbitrarily add and remove people like with iMessage? Doesn't the matrix chat app allow for this? Might be useful to learn how they do it if this is of interest. https://matrix.org/docs/guides/end-to-end-encryption-implementation-guide https://matrix.org/docs/guides/end-to-end-encryption-impleme...
  - OJFord 4y ago

nickjj 4y ago

Ah, history is mostly repeating itself (minus the need for government intervention ~20 years ago). We had similar issues in the late 90s / early 2000s with ICQ, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Chat, etc.. Apps like https://www.pidgin.im/ https://www.pidgin.im/ existed to let you check everything within 1 app because all of these apps spoke the same protocol or close enough that things mostly worked.

albertzeyer 4y ago
This is a bit different though. It's one thing to allow independent applications to use the protocol and service, like Pidgin and others. And also many services did not like this and repeatedly changed their proprietary custom protocol to make this difficult. It's another thing to be interoperable between services. Then you could continue to use only one service but still be able to talk to people on other services.
- nickjj 4y ago
  Yeah that's true, in the Pidgin case you were still signing up for each service independently. Pidgin let you communicate through its app instead of the service provider's app. None of the service providers had data about the others. I'm not sure how they plan to make things fully interoperable. Wouldn't that mean every chat app would need a complete chat history for every user multiplied by every chat app out there? Or instead they introduce a shared parent company / govt. entity where all chat messages are sent through, stored and pushed to users. Time to bust out the tin foil hats!
  - Cerium 4y ago
    I think you could make it work with only some username namespace. Eg: whatsapp.cerium vs fb.cerium. Facebook would forward messages to whatsapp usernames and vice versa.

brightball 4y ago

Honestly, those apps should just expose themselves via email and be done with it.

t-3 4y ago

Wouldn't that basically set protocols in stone and block any future improvement or research? Standards are generally good, but I can't see legally mandated protocols as anything but guaranteed ossification.