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> I will not know if the person I'm talking to is using the official Signal app or Tiktok, will I? Well, if meta is going to sign an agreement with the app, it

> I will not know if the person I'm talking to is using the official Signal app or Tiktok, will I? Well, if meta is going to sign an agreement with the app, it's probably going to show which app a user is using, especially to avoid username/phone number collisions between platforms. > I think it was only a change in the ToS that was reflecting what they had already been doing in practice for years, right? Most people I know did not really care, they just got exposed to alternatives (Signal, Telegram, Threema), and then realized that WhatsApp was just fine for them. Nope, it was much bigger than that, it also heavily widened the scope of the data they stored without encryption. > I am not sure it will, for the same reason almost everybody uses Google Chrome (not a Chromium variant) or Safari even when there is no lock-in: people just use what they are exposed to. Chromium isn't relevant here, Email is. Even though Gmail and Outlook control like 90% of the market, it didn't stop competitors like Proton or Hey from existing, it allows others to innovate without hitting the same issue, lack of users on their platforms. > An open API enables third-party apps, and that's cool. But forcing WhatsApp to support third-party protocols in their own app is just weird to me I don't think they have to support anything, it's just an open API, the other app has to be compatible with WhatsApp to be able to send anything. Also, why not? They have the capability to do so. I find matrix's article on this very useful https://matrix.org/blog/2022/02/03/digital-markets-act-and-interoperability-myth-debunking-of-the-gatekeepers-arguments/ https://matrix.org/blog/2022/02/03/digital-markets-act-and-i...

Arathorn 3y ago
There’s a bunch more concrete details on this at https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3345-opening-up-communication-silos-with-matrix-2-0-and-the-eu-digital-markets-act/ https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3345-open... - the March 2022 blog post is a little stale now :)
palata 3y ago
Let me take a step back. I believe that enforcing interoperability has downsides, and they should be acknowledged. And I can't help but to think that this law is rather a lobbying effort to undermine the "winners" of the current situation. Let's note that a ton of people are using alternatives to WhatsApp today. Probably not less than people who are using "alternative" email providers (which you mentioned as a "good example"), actually? I completely see how Matrix has everything to win from that law, so of course they will lobby for it. And the article you linked reads (to me) like a bunch of highly-debatable unconvincing marketing statements. I personally am not a big fan of the Matrix protocol, and I find that using Matrix is really painful (and I tried hard to love Matrix). Telling me that "the solution is to enforce Matrix everywhere" will obviously not convince me. I do believe that interoperability is a feature that may or may not be desirable. E-mail is great for that, and I am happy it exists. But other protocols have other strengths, and that should be okay. Why should we all agree on a "standard way of communicating"? And note that I hate BigTech as much as the next guy. I just don't think that writing a law that would (for instance) force every second person to use Firefox would be the good way to promote Firefox.
- Arathorn 3y ago
  > Telling me that "the solution is to enforce Matrix everywhere" will obviously not convince me. thankfully nobody’s saying that, so you’re fine :)

Arathorn 3y ago

There’s a bunch more concrete details on this at https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3345-opening-up-communication-silos-with-matrix-2-0-and-the-eu-digital-markets-act/ https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3345-open... - the March 2022 blog post is a little stale now :)

palata 3y ago

Let me take a step back. I believe that enforcing interoperability has downsides, and they should be acknowledged. And I can't help but to think that this law is rather a lobbying effort to undermine the "winners" of the current situation. Let's note that a ton of people are using alternatives to WhatsApp today. Probably not less than people who are using "alternative" email providers (which you mentioned as a "good example"), actually? I completely see how Matrix has everything to win from that law, so of course they will lobby for it. And the article you linked reads (to me) like a bunch of highly-debatable unconvincing marketing statements. I personally am not a big fan of the Matrix protocol, and I find that using Matrix is really painful (and I tried hard to love Matrix). Telling me that "the solution is to enforce Matrix everywhere" will obviously not convince me. I do believe that interoperability is a feature that may or may not be desirable. E-mail is great for that, and I am happy it exists. But other protocols have other strengths, and that should be okay. Why should we all agree on a "standard way of communicating"? And note that I hate BigTech as much as the next guy. I just don't think that writing a law that would (for instance) force every second person to use Firefox would be the good way to promote Firefox.

Arathorn 3y ago
> Telling me that "the solution is to enforce Matrix everywhere" will obviously not convince me. thankfully nobody’s saying that, so you’re fine :)