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BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
- s1mplicissimus 8mo agoI signed up for the waitlist weeks ago, but no actual access is available :/
- mcjiggerlog 8mo ago> With the new WhatsApp interface mandated by the DMA, any BirdyChat user in the EEA will be able to start a chat with any WhatsApp user in the region simply by knowing their phone number. Unfortunately, as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side, this isn't really true. Honestly that decision alone means it's kinda dead in the water.
- InsideOutSanta 8mo agoYep, 100% malicious compliance on Meta's part. I hope they get punished for this.
- mlrtime 8mo agoHow so exactly? They can say they are keeping conversations secure from 3rd parties.
- sagarm 8mo agoThat doesn't make sense -- the parties to the conversation already _have_ the messages. Spam prevention is a likely angle, however. EU should force it to be opt-out, not opt-in -- probably what people want anyway.
- speleding 8mo agoI would like to be opted out by default. I'm worried at least one of those new services is going to get overrun by spammers, and if I'm opted in by default they could use the gateway to whatsapp to spam everyone else.
- dfajgljsldkjag 8mo agoIt's better than nothing. If you have a different app and want to talk to your friend who uses whatsapp it's much easier to convince him to toggle a setting than to download a different app.
- echelon 8mo ago[flagged]
- jstummbillig 8mo ago> This is fucking malicious compliance. Meta knows what they're doing. And so do the courts. Give them some time to cook. How goes the popular American saying: We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.
- echelon 8mo agoHow long? Lina Khan didn't move fast enough, then she was shown the door. Maybe the EU will persist where the US FTC/DOJ could not?
- Nextgrid 8mo ago> Give them some time to cook How long? I'm still waiting for the GDPR to actually be enforced meaningfully.
- jstummbillig 8mo agoHow is it not enforced "meaningfully"? (I don't know what is meaningful to you)
- Nextgrid 8mo agoHere's a good overview: https://noyb.eu/en/data-protection-day-are-europeans-really-protected https://noyb.eu/en/data-protection-day-are-europeans-really-... It's several years old by now but nothing has changed. It is still more profitable to breach the GDPR than to comply with it.
- thisislife2 8mo agoCould you clarify - What has been implemented as opt-in by WhatsApp to act as a hurdle?
- odo1242 8mo agoReceiving message requests from third-party users. So you have to get the person you know to flip a toggle before they get the message.
- thisislife2 8mo agoIs this a per-contact setting or a "universal" one?
- dfajgljsldkjag 8mo agoEach whatsapp user needs to enable the setting once to allow chats with multiple number of third party users.
- odo1242 8mo agoAccount-wide. Though you can only turn it on in Europe.
- zeeZ 8mo agoIt's a universal setting. You have to enable it per third-party app, though. You get to choose whether you want to see them listed with WhatsApp chats or in a separate folder
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo agoHow the opt-in is considered acceptable, that's a toothless resolution
- tonyhart7 8mo agobecause its EU only ????? you want it to be enabled by default while only certain amount of people want to use it
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo agoIs it auto enabled on eu phones? If not, to ne it's not compliant
- dmitrygr 8mo agoI understand my agreement with WhatsApp - i read it and all. I have no agreement with that other app. I do not know what they would do with my data. Until they give me a privacy policy and i approve it, they indeed should have none of my data. Opt-in is the correct solution. I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant (that app is European and thus must care about GDPR). They do not have my permission to have/handle my private data, and GDPR does not allow WhatAspp to hand it over without my permission either... My name (which whatsapp exposes simply with my phone number) is considered PII under GDPR and
- lxgr 8mo agoWhat a strange way to think about a telecommunications service. By the same logic, shouldn’t there be a privacy policy for regular old phone lines? Who knows which third parties are between you and the person on the other end! And speaking about the other end: I have bad news about all the data you share with untrustworthy contacts on WhatsApp… Quite practically, anyone that enables backups (which WhatsApp heavily nudges people to do) uploads a copy of all your messages and media sent to them to a cloud provider you have no privacy agreement with.
- dmitrygr 8mo agoold telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number. whataspp discloses name, picture, status As for your second comment, updated first comment with: I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant if that app is European. They do not have my permission to have my private data, and GDPR does not allow whatAspp to hand it over without my permission either...
- lxgr 8mo ago> whataspp discloses name, picture, status Only to who you choose to make it available to. And if you choose “everybody”, I don’t see how you can reasonably expect this to mean “everybody not using third-party software”?
- 8mo ago
- prmoustache 8mo ago> any WhatsApp user in the region The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. The only reason I keep a whatsapp account is to stay in touch with my family in law and a few relatives who live in another continent.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago>The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. Sounds like an easy fix. Europe just has to convince the rest of the world to ditch the 15 year old popular US apps ingrained in pop culture and with network effects, and have them switch to their own EU made apps, this way we can all communicate together. :hugs: Until then, let's keep chatting on $US_APP so we can debate on how we're gonna achieve that switch.
- neves 8mo agoMan, this is just a message app. It's trivial. The law must mandate it to work. It's not a technical problem. It's a political one
- fooker 8mo ago> It's not a technical problem How do you do encryption?
- zrm 8mo agoA probable implementation is that you bootstrap the initial key exchange using web PKI (if you want to talk to Alice@example.com then your client makes a TLS connection to example.com and asks for Alice's public key) and thereafter you use something like the Signal ratchet thing.
- lazide 8mo agoThat technical solution is significant and unsolved. I don’t think it would likely work without some major new standards either.
- zoobab 8mo ago"opt-in" FAIL
- raverbashing 8mo ago> as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side Chatting with anyone has always been opt in from the point of the receiver, so I don't get your point?
- urbandw311er 8mo ago> any BirdyChat user And how many of these are there? Anyone?
- moffkalast 8mo agoI thought the stupid name was enough to kill it tbh. I'm not telling anyone they can call me on "birdychat" lmao.
- lpcvoid 8mo agoWhile I also don't think Birdychat is a good name, you could also argue that "Whatsapp" is a weird name for an app billions of people use.
- jrowen 8mo agoWhatsApp is a bizarre name, and I think that contributes to it occupying a "lower rent" space than the others (the goofy chat background also helps). But I think most people ultimately gloss over the joke and it just becomes kind of abstract. With BirdyChat though, it feels like you'll be confronted by its silliness in perpetuity.
- wohoef 8mo agoJust opened my Whatsapp settings and "Third-party chat requests" is on by default (From the Netherlands). Although to actually receive messages you do have to activate this feature.
- 1a527dd5 8mo agoI wonder if this will force Apple to open up iMessage.
- zer0zzz 8mo agoLast I heard iMessage was not deemed an eu “gatekeeper” so no
- serial_dev 8mo agoI don’t know anyone in Europe who uses iMessage, everyone is on WhatsApp though.
- odo1242 8mo agoHow does this work with end to end encryption? Just out of curiosity
- snowmobile 8mo agoSorry to be "that guy", because I don't know the details of how WhatsApp does E2EE, but in any proper (as in secure and private) implementation the only thing that should matter is whether the client follows the spec? You might as well ask, how does $browser work with HTTPS?
- skippyboxedhero 8mo agoI think the suspicion is based on this app being offered in a region whose government is hostile to privacy and this implementation being connected with the strong nativist bent in Europe. The "spec" is not relevant in any way because we have no idea what else is going on. Why was it relevant that these operators must specifically be in the EU? Everyone is just complying with the global spec...but the app provider must be in Europe...okay.
- oblio 8mo ago> region whose government is hostile to privacy Which government?
- skippyboxedhero 8mo agoEU. I don't think it is any better at the national level however.
- oblio 8mo agoThe EU is not a government. It's a loose economic confederation. And national European governments vary wildly in their positions on this.
- thisislife2 8mo agoExciting news! Can't wait for iMessage to open up too. Any idea if this (or other future messengers) will work outside of Europe too or does WhatsApp use some kind of geofencing, like Apple, to prevent non-EU citizens from enjoying the same rights too?
- thevillagechief 8mo agoiMessage will not be opening up. They lobbied hard in the EU and got an exemption for not being popular enough there I guess.
- nozzlegear 8mo agoDid they lobby for an exemption, or is that just how the law is written?
- bsimpson 8mo agoThe DMA is enforced by bureaucracy. The commission proposes that certain platforms are big enough to be regulated, and then there's a comment period/negotiation. The list of platforms currently being regulated is publicly available.
- drcongo 8mo agoI might be misremembering, but I think iMessage implementing RCS was the compromise.
- B1FIDO 8mo agoI must protest that this kind of announcement belies the stupidity of proprietary chat protocols. Remember when IRC was king, and basically, anyone could write an IRC client? Anyone could write a MUD client, or even a Telnet client. Those are open protocols. When Pidgin came out, it was like a breath of fresh air for me. In the early 90s I had multiple IM accounts (starting with ICQ!) and unifying them, especially under a Linux client, was a dream come true. But of course, AIM purported to use Oscar at the time, but they really hated F/OSS and 3rd-party clients, and so did the other proprietary guys, so it became cat-and-mouse to keep the client compatible while the servers always tried to break their functionality. Now this dumb announcement comes out that a 3rd party has (apparently legally) established interop with a Meta property with (I am guessing) a completely proprietary, undocumented, secret protocol underneath. I am not impressed. I am McKayla Maroney unimpressed. I want open protocols and I want client devs who are free to produce clients in freeform, as long as they can follow the protocol specs. Now we have email clients who speak SMTP, IMAP, and POP3, including the "secured, encrypted" versions of those protocols. We should ask for nothing less when it comes to other communications.
- PEe9bB7D 8mo agoMatrix is getting traction though...
- Nextgrid 8mo agoMatrix is a lost cause. The protocol is too complex/ambitious and the company behind it doesn't have the resources to actually produce a good server nor client implementation. I was hopeful for it at first but at some point you have to be realistic.
- zenmac 8mo agoWhile I agree with you, and there should more diverse members than just the people from Element. What I do like about them is the zero server trust stand they are taking on their clients which makes migration a pain in the butt, but that is what one would expect from a true e2ee chat app. And now they have two stable servers in rust. The French and German government including military are using the protocol to make their own apps. Maybe it should be something the EU should put some more resource into it?
- altern8 8mo agoThis is pretty amazing, but I wish they picked a better name for it. I have a feeling that a good amount of people will dismiss it just because of the name.
- snowmobile 8mo agoWhat's wrong with the name? Some cultural reference I'm not getting?
- Onavo 8mo agoTwitter. Also it could mean penis (in some places).
- altern8 8mo agoIt just sounds—let's say—too playful. Specially if you go to the homepage and they're trying to market it as a work too.. If I went to my boss and tried to make the case that we should move all of our encrypted communication from Whatsapp to something called BirdyChat they would laugh at me and dismiss the idea. That might just be me, not sure.
- drcongo 8mo agoIt's not just you.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoWhat would they think about a “Slack” at work
- altern8 8mo agoThey would probably cut them some slack and buy it anyways.
- snowmobile 8mo agoBecause a pun on "What's Up?" and "App" is so professional? Maybe I'm old but I remember a time when I though WhatsApp was an extremely silly name for a SMS replacement.
- mytailorisrich 8mo agoThis is app/company from Latvia, as I understand.
- brabel 8mo agoDon't they have a desktop app? The WhatsApp desktop app is heavy and annoying. Would love to use something else.
- poisonborz 8mo agoEven the first announcement about this included BirdyChat and Haiket. Two completely unknown and yet unreleased closed source chat apps with a waitlist. Can't help but think they are maintained by people close to Meta dev teams and were hand-picked for a malicious compliance, where they can just point to them as examples, and they make onboarding as complicated and expensive as possible for others.
- input_sh 8mo agoCorrect! This is just Meta doing malicious compliance by being "compatible" with companies with no actual product, three-months old waitlist, no actual users within the EU, and nobody to push back on WhatsApp's definition of interoperability. Then when some real product tries to actually become interoperable down-the-line, Meta's gonna be like "well these two did it just fine according to this backwards implementation, why can't you?" They're both b2b products that are gonna try to find their first users by pitching the idea that you can use their products to spam WhatsApp users. Haiket doesn't even try to hide its connection to Meta. All you have to do is to go to their website, click on press, and see in the only press release they've ever posted that its CEO holds patents in use by Meta. Here, let me save you a click: https://haiket.com/press/release-nov11.html https://haiket.com/press/release-nov11.html > Alex holds over 10 patents in voice and communication technologies, assigned to and used by Google and Facebook.
- kubb 8mo agoI see a second round of legislation might be needed. They'll get it right eventually.
- input_sh 8mo agoEh, there's no specific definition of interoperability written in the Digital Markets Act. It's decided on a case-by-case basis and I'm sure that the legislators in charge of this case will push back on this piss-poor implementation in like a year from now. By the time this back-and-forth reaches its end, these two will find some shady b2b customers and are gonna be touted as "successful European startups".
- m00dy 8mo agoI can vibecode this in an hour.
- jakkos 8mo agoMy new favorite breed of commenters are AI bros who go around lamenting how trivial other peoples' work is, while they themselves fail to create anything that anyone else actually wants to use
- nottorp 8mo agoBased on other comments it is bad enough to be vibe coded :)
- hsbauauvhabzb 8mo agoYou could have vibecoded a better comment too. But you didn’t.
- rambambram 8mo agoAs a European, I would like to know in _which_ European country you're based. I think I know all of them, people from abroad might not. Saying "Made in Europe" is too general for my European liking. ;)
- arter45 8mo agohttps://www.birdy.chat/terms https://www.birdy.chat/terms says Latvia
- kykat 8mo agoThe company of the website appears to be based in Riga, Latvia https://company.lursoft.lv/en/fyello-productivity/40203455420 https://company.lursoft.lv/en/fyello-productivity/4020345542...
- altern8 8mo agoI thought the same thing. I also don't think there's such a thing as "made in Europe", as if it was "made in USA". Is it made in Germany, Italy, Albania..?
- ncruces 8mo agoPlenty of supermarket products say made in Europe, particularly (but not only) white label products.
- dfxm12 8mo agoThe words aren't important. The regulated meaning is. Does it have a legal meaning? If so, what is it? Who enforces it? Consider made in Italy vs made in Germany are different in meaningful aspects.
- TeMPOraL 8mo agoIs there even a regulated meaning to "made in X"? The way I see it, "made in Europe" may be dubious, but "made in EU" should be just as okay to write as "made in USA". And if it's not a thing, well, nothing is a thing until people make it a thing. EDIT: also we're talking about a software product here, where most things written on the product is legally meaningless - otherwise we'd have special customs regimes for those major software exporter places like "love" and "♡".
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- t00 8mo agoClosed, iOS only, invite only. Thanks.
- Hackbraten 8mo agoThanks for the heads up. You saved me some frustration and disappointment.
- morphle 8mo agoWarning! Badly broken user interface, I wouldn't trust these programmers to get the end-to-end encryption right. On the second screen of the app there is already an infuriating bug: they ask to give your work email because than you go hire in priority on their invite-only waiting list. So you type in your email again and again and again, alternating between all your emails, but you keep returning to the form asking for your work email. You check those emails to see if they send you something to activate your account but nothing. Exasperated you try the only other button, sign up with private email instead. Guess that works, because you leave the infinite loop. But than zilch, nada, nothing. Don't these script-kiddies use their own app?
- aduwah 8mo agoI was a big fan of pidgin, but this premise makes me feel iffy. Why would I ever want my work to intrude on my personal messaging? My private time is my own. Slack/Teams is perfect because I can mute it on a schedule when I stop for the day. Anything that is urgent can be managed via Pagerduty or similar on a controlled fashion
- maqp 8mo agoThe unfortunate problem with Pidgin is you don't have proper cross-platform E2EE chats, especially for groups. OTR is terribly outdated with its 1536-bit FFDH. These days the security margin sits at 2048-bit minimum, 3072-bit recommended. OMEMO might work but it's just not a standard. Good thing Signal made the whole thing just work.
- Bender 8mo agoSurely there must be someone capable of and willing to update OTR to support the latest PQC encryption protocols and ciphers. OTR is the only semi-trustable model of E2EE I have ever seen. Anything managed by the same platform managing the communication is dead in the water for me.
- altern8 8mo agoI loved Pigdin! The UI and brand was so good, too, for Linux back in the day...
- thwg 8mo agoWhen a smaller network tries to be interoperable with a larger network, the larger network almost always eats up the smaller one. This is how XMPP was killed by Gtalk, if any of you are old enough to remember.
- oblio 8mo agoGtalk did not kill XMPP. Very few people were using XMPP before Gtalk, most people were using AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger and other proprietary protocols. Gtalk supported XMPP to gain traction as a more open messenger and possibly because they implemented the original version on top of XMPP to get it out the door faster. Gtalk did pull the plug on XMPP but that didn't really change much. I don't remember EVER interacting with someone with their own XMPP server. Gtalk had nothing to kill.
- B1FIDO 8mo agoJabber was big with the "federated, decentralized" crowd. I recall several colleagues who established Jabber addresses and advertised them, sometimes as their only IM address. XMPP was more than Gtalk, but I think that Gtalk was the "death knell" for XMPP, having absorbed it and sort of claimed it as their own. Anyone who would've used federated Jabber addresses in those days is using Mastodon now.
- oblio 8mo ago> Jabber was big with the "federated, decentralized" crowd. Yeah, just like today, all 4 of them. Gtalk put XMPP briefly in the spotlight, but for the masses, XMPP never really lived. It was a niche protocol with very niche usage. Just like Mastodon today.
- vpShane 8mo agoThis means nothing good, Meta and its products are a privacy nightmare, with WhatsApp having major market share outside of the U.S. People need signal. It's not perfect, but it's the best available. No source code, wait list, special compatibility with a for-profit ad based company. No thanks.
- fragmede 8mo agoand people using it. That may not matter much to you, but that's usually what people what from their chat app.
- Nextgrid 8mo agoSignal still doesn't allow you to backup/export chat history on iOS into an open format? I think now they have some bullshit proprietary paid cloud storage solution (why not let me use the cloud I already pay for?), but for years they haven't had any solution for iOS at all. Last time I had to reinstall my phone I ended up having to use & fix some Github project that simulated Signal's transfer protocol to simulate a target device to export my data. I then deleted Signal and migrated to iMessage/WhatsApp and called it a day.
- B-Con 8mo agoAny time an app has bizarre functionality gap on iOS, I assume it's because of Apple's anti-consumer bullshit app restrictions. No idea if that's actually what's going on, but Apple thinks of their devices as appliances and hates when apps offer pro-customer features.
- pseudalopex 8mo agoNo. The Signal developers opted out of iOS's backup and export features.
- fph 8mo agoI have no idea why, but I would bet it's because it was sending stuff to Apple unencrypted.
- ExpertAdvisor01 8mo agoHope the new Whatsapp interface won't be abused for spam . As Whatsapp already has spam issues . Will it run through meta's anti-spam filtering ?
- ExoticPearTree 8mo ago> As Whatsapp already has spam issues Want to elaborate a little? I think I got only one spammy WhatsApp message in the last who knows how many years it was made available (I remember the time when I had to pay to use it on the iPhone). I get more SMS spam nowadays.
- ExpertAdvisor01 8mo agoNewly registered Accounts from India/Pakistan were spamming me (pig butchering scam ) . Around 90% got picked up by the spam filter,but when they use hundreds/thousands accounts even 10% is a lot.
- colinprince 8mo agoThis five-month-old comment suggests that birdychat uses telegram, pivot maybe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736050
- nunobrito 8mo agoOr likely combinining both. Good catch.
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- my_throwaway23 8mo agoWhile not a commercial offering, which is what this is saying in reality - closed source, commercial alternative with (limited) interoperability, I've been running my own chat server for a while now with (limited) interoperability with both Whatsapp and Messenger. I suspect a good number of people here don't care for any of this - FOSS, chat, voice, and video is where it's at. Interoperability for those last two don't exist yet AFAIK, and they're truly game-changers. Will that change? Does the DMA mention anything other than chat? Perhaps someone could enlighten me.
- thebiblelover7 8mo agoHow have you been running it? How did you make it interoperable?
- my_throwaway23 8mo agoI'm using Element Synapse with the Mautrix bridges. They're all a pain to setup, with a ton of required configuration options each, but once setup, it's mostly transparent where any one chat originates. Reactions, emojis, media, it all just works. The downside, of course, is that voice and video will not work. Oh, and perhaps a ton of initial invitations, one for every conversation you have open. There are open servers you can join, with the bridges enabled, but of course, that kind of defeats the purpose. At that point you might as well use a commercial, closed-source offering, as, ironically, a corporation with a large footprint you can sue. Average Joe with an AWS instance you might not be able to track down, should your data leak. https://github.com/element-hq/synapse https://github.com/element-hq/synapse https://github.com/mautrix/meta https://github.com/mautrix/meta
- zufallsheld 8mo agoWith this project (https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/ https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/), setting up the bridges gets a lot easier. After the initial setup, upgrading the bridges is painless.
- 8mo ago
- AgharaShyam 8mo agoThis is really amazing. I hope some regulation like DMA comes to India as well. Does WhatsApp charge money for this? If not, why would a business use their API? They could simply create an app to directly talk to their customers, or am I missing something?
- phishingpharao 8mo ago[dead]
- yigalirani 8mo agoWould that work outside europe?
- bni 8mo agoDoes this mandate allow me to use a. 3rd party Teams, Google Chat and Slack client? I suspect the answer is no, but why?
- benoau 8mo agoThey are not designated gatekeepers. It is unfortunate because interoperability should be its own objective for its own sake.
- aniviacat 8mo agoBecause they're not big enough to be considered a "gatekeeper".
- usr1106 8mo agoThere are criteria for how dominant a platform is to be considered gatekeeper. Teams, Google and Slack have much smaller market share for private messaging, so I guess they are not affected. Don't remember the criteria by heart.
- shevy-java 8mo agoThat name isn't that great ... WhatsApp is not a great name either, but catchy and somewhat simple. BirdyPo.. I mean BirdyChat sounds like when doves cry. But not as catchy. Also, I am all in favour of Europeans becoming less dependent on the USA (yet-another-ICE-killing incident today, with video footage contradicting the claims made by the current government - again), but there is kind of ... a weak decision-making process here. Lobbyists sell to Europeans that Amazon data servers in Europe, now comply with european laws. Well, those are still external companies that will hand over data from europeans, so that is not a solution. Why do some media try to insinuate otherwise? Who owns and controls all these media?
- u8080 8mo ago>still external companies that will hand over data from europeans The idea here is that EU three letter agencies also have access to your data
- aucisson_masque 8mo agoI’d rather have my data accessed by eu agencies than USA ones. Seeing how this country is turning more and more into a fascist oligarchy.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoRight-wing populist parties are very popular in Europe, including in France and Germany, the two most important EU countries. There is a significant possibility that people with Trump-like ideologies will come to power there before too long.
- potatototoo99 8mo agoTrump is so incompetent he has killed any chance for far right politicians to be elected for the next decades. And even them hate him now due to Greenland.
- jordemort 8mo agoI'm pretty resentful that people in the US are stuck using worse/less featureful versions of products from US companies, while the government in Europe can get these kinds of concessions for their people. If a company is legally obligated to offer a feature to people in other parts of the world, they should be forced to offer it at back home in the US as well, since we can't be bothered otherwise to pass any of these nice laws for ourselves. See also: choice in app stores
- latexr 8mo agoSometimes it happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
- wswin 8mo agoLet's not pretend they would do this if the tech monopolies were european.
- lxgr 8mo agoYes, the EU would never dare to regulate European companies, for example require banks to offer free and instant person-to-person money transfers or mobile phone operators to offer data roaming at domestic rates.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- seec 8mo agoThe only reason we have that is because fintech is eating the meal of traditional banks. They came up with ways to transfer with just a card (which benefits Visa and Mastercard, US companies) and do inter-account instant transfers for free. SEPA normalization took forever, and even now instant transfers are still very often paid past the limit in your card bundle (probably around 3 if you don't have an expensive card). Brussels rarely works for the little people; they just support whatever the big players at the moment want, unless they are foreign and can come up with a reason to tax them. It is delusional to think politicians in Brussels care about the little guys; it is always about maintaining or gaining power, otherwise they wouldn't come up with absurd regulations that hit the small players much harder than any of the big ones.
- drnick1 8mo agoIt would have been more effective to require Meta (and all other messaging companies) to implement an open protocol or open source theirs, so that people can freely write alternative clients free of malware.
- didip 8mo agoThe sky might as well rains toads before this happens.
- reedciccio 8mo agoDoesn't Whatsapp already use an open source protocol? https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
- drnick1 8mo agoAFAIK it's Signal with proprietary extensions, so it's effectively closed.
- uyzstvqs 8mo agoA custom API is the only way for a platform to extend its native E2EE sessions and features to other platforms. Making those APIs completely open would become a major spam problem, which would likely end them up in the same situation as SMTP, where small servers are blocked-by-default by big providers. Interoperability by agreement between legitimate messaging services, using custom APIs is the only realistic and secure way to accomplish this.
- direwolf20 8mo agoBut WhatsApp is already completely open for spammers. They can use the secret API or screen-scrape WhatsApp itself.
- uyzstvqs 8mo agoWhatsApp bans spam pretty quickly. Unfiltered spam is much, much worse.
- amelius 8mo agoWhen can I send messages from a PC running Python?
- vachina 8mo agoYou can just that a working script is run by crooks (and is not public)
- charcircuit 8mo agoWhatsApp has an official API you can use already. https://pypi.org/project/whatsapp-python/ https://pypi.org/project/whatsapp-python/
- GranPC 8mo agoThat is not official, unmaintained since November 2024, and only applicable for the business API. It wouldn't allow someone to create a WhatsApp client for a non-Android/iOS platform.
- charcircuit 8mo ago>It wouldn't allow someone to create a WhatsApp client for a non-Android/iOS platform. This is moving the goal posts.
- amelius 8mo agoThe goal post was moved already because I said "when can I send messages" and not "when can my business send messages". Anyway, thanks for the link.
- amelius 8mo agoLooks like it is an API for the WhatsApp Business Platform. (So not free, not for consumers) https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/overview https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messa...
- 8mo ago
- sahiljagtapyc 8mo agodamnn
- ksec 8mo agoI am wondering if this opens up the possibility of having more than two WhatsApp Number on the same phone. Especially on iOS. I have long requested this feature for Whatsapp Business, where I can pay an annual subscription just to have more than one number. So I can separate life between Business and Friends.
- augusto-moura 8mo agoI think you can do it on pure Androids that can have more than 1 SIM card, you need to have an Android profile for each and have both sim cards in the same phone.
- direwolf20 8mo agoNexus used to support unlimited profiles for the whole phone including every app, Samsung phones don't.
- wolvoleo 8mo agoYou can do this on many Android phones. You can have up to 5 WhatsApp numbers on a Samsung phone. Samsung has dual messenger, so you can have 2 instances by default. Then you can open up a work profile and have another two. Then install WhatsApp in a secure folder and have another one (dual messenger seems blocked in secure folder so just one)
- My_Name 8mo agoLet me know when I can link it to the hundred whatsapp groups other people have added me to, so I can remove the stain of zuckerberg from as much of my life as possible.
- velocity3230 8mo agoInstall a Matrix client and run a WhatsApp bridge and you can. Is it trivial? No. Is it possible? Yes, I do it.
- zahirbmirza 8mo agoFrom their page "Built for better conversations Reach people with their email, not their phone number. Designed for focused, meaningful exchanges between managers, builders, and collaborators." Is it using email protocols to send messages or is it using email addresses as a proxy for usernames? The claim of a drive for better conversations is not really that accurate because better conversations rely on a more universally used app/system than presently exists. Ie, a replacement that would have to grow internationally extraordinarily quickly. Apple figured that out... iMessage was basically a cheat code to a vast userbase almost instantly. What Apple didn't figure, however, was that iMessage's green/blue thingy that went on for so long didn't really give android/sms users fomo, but really, it just created an unneeded communication barrier. Such barriers are the exact opposite of what is needed for a communication platform to be excellent. Unfortunately, decisions counter to what may be perceived as income generating are difficult to reverse. These sorts of apps may not be revolutionary enough I fear. I would love to adopt something like this, but Meta continue to make too many billions to let their monopoly on human communication management to be taken away that easily.
- bruce343434 8mo agoNever heard of this before. Why would I use this? I am assuming the messages are not actually encrypted, because on their own privacy page they state that they "process" messages and attachments sent through birdychat. So are they processing the raw unencrypted data on their servers or what? From a cursory glance of their CSAE policy, combined with the above, it seems they would be very eager to comply with the dreaded "chat control". https://www.birdy.chat/privacy https://www.birdy.chat/privacy
- Snoozus 8mo agoOn the main page it states clearly that messages are e2e encrypted. So all they can collect is metadata.
- rippeltippel 8mo agoIt is very possible that they process messages in the client app, before sending them. WhatsApp does the same: have you noticed how the photos you receive have a debatable quality? Presumably (and hopefully) the sender's app downscaled them before e2e encryption.
- bruce343434 8mo agoFrom this it seems that whatsapp interop requires you to pass a url of the media, not the actual encrypted media. Aside from TLS, I'm not sure what encryption you get for attachments https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-messenger-messaging-interoperability-eu/ https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-mess...
- ExoticPearTree 8mo agoYou just need to enable "HD videos & photos" option in the WhatsApp settings and then the pictures and movies sent via the app have a much higher quality.
- neves 8mo agoHow to use it in Brazil? I don't trust Zuck.
- B1FIDO 8mo agoYou now wish to use an app that freely interoperates now with Meta's WhatsApp, because you don't trust the guy who owns WhatsApp? Trippy, dude!
- booleandilemma 8mo agoI've recently been feeling like consumers overseas get better treatment from tech companies than us here in the US. Unskippable ads are illegal in Vietnam, and now Europeans get interoperable messaging in WhatsApp. Meanwhile here in the US we're getting shafted. When are we going to put our collective feet down and say enough is enough?
- DeathArrow 8mo agoStill, no one will adopt BirdyChat because of this.
- srikanthdotch 8mo agoThe thing I hate most about WhatsApp is the number of ad messages from businesses. It’s almost unusable for me. I have no option to use anything else, as all my contacts use WhatsApp and the network effects lock me in.
- Semaphor 8mo agoAs someone who never got any of those, is that like cold spam messages for businesses you don’t have as contacts? And can’t you just disable messages from unknown contacts?
- Semaphor 8mo agoLooks like it’s sadly mobile-only
- globular-toast 8mo agoWhy would I use this closed source program instead of another closed source program. I don't trust some random company from Latvia any more than I trust Meta. We need this interop to be available for free software clients. I want something like Pidgin.
- rw_grim 8mo agoWell you can have it now... https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/ https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/
- globular-toast 8mo agoWhat's the catch?
- rw_grim 8mo agoSee the known issues on the page I linked? https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/blob/whatsmeow/README.md https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/blob/whatsme...
- vlz 8mo ago> Currently, BirdyChat supports 1:1 chats, with group chat interoperability coming in a future update. I wondered whether it can be used with Whatsapp groups: Apprently not yet.
- j1elo 8mo agoI'd like to take the opportunity to mention a tiny very useful app that allows opening a WhatsApp chat directly with any number, without having to register it first as a contact. Great for vacations or similar situations where a quick one-time chat is needed with somebody: * https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trianguloy.openInWhatsapp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trianguloy... * Webapp: https://trianguloy.github.io/OpenInWhatsapp_Web/ https://trianguloy.github.io/OpenInWhatsapp_Web/ I'm just grateful for this app, so I thought that maybe other HNers might find it useful.
- tngranados 8mo agoSince some time ago, you can type the number directly in the search bar and it would let you message it, at least on iOS
- Kwpolska 8mo agoSame on Android.
- marcandre 8mo agoOr from any browser: https://wa.me/<phone number, just the digits, starting with country code>
- j1elo 8mo agoIn fact that's simply what the app does. It's just a handy way to have it on the phone as a shortcut and not having to remember the details of how to do it. Although with the sibling comments about Whatsapp itself allowing to do all this, the helper app seems less useful now.
- phatfish 8mo agoAh, this is handy, as Europe (even more than the UK somehow) seems to love engaging in customer service via WhatsApp. On the continent I end up having to use it to manage bookings for Hotels and restaurants. I removed my profile picture because of this.
- aryehof 8mo agoOnly for “verified professionals”… “work email” please. Find this exclusionary and distasteful.
- aryehof 8mo agoOnly for “verified professionals”… “work email” please. This isn't a general chat app alternative.
- marcocastignoli 8mo agoData BirdyChat collects: > Messages, attachments and other materials that you send through BirdyChat to your contacts; No thanks
- Etheryte 8mo agoHow do you think they would offer a messaging service if they didn't store the messages and attachments? The content has to live somewhere.
- pnt12 8mo agoWith ToS, we can assume that everything that is not laid down explicitly tends to err in favor of the company, not the user. "we store all messages": they store everything and ther s no guarantee of processing, sharing or selling that data "we store all messages encrypted end to end for sole the purposes of communication and can never access its contents" would provide many more guarantees.
- patrickmcnamara 8mo agoThis happens a lot on HN. I remember there was a court order for OpenAI to release ChatGPT chat history, and many of the comments were simply "why are they even storing chat history in the first place? ridiculous" as if that isn't a core feature of ChatGPT.
- array_key_first 8mo agoI don't know, ask iMessage, Google messages, and, ironically, whatsapp.
- hasel 8mo agoit lives on the user’s phone?
- Etheryte 8mo agoThis is not the case for any modern chat app. When you send a message to someone, it isn't delivered peer to peer straight to your recipient. The message goes from you to the service provider's server from where delivery is attempted whenever that message is processed. Your recipient might be offline, out of cell service, phone turned off, or etc and the central server takes care of that problem. Similarly when you log in to the chat service on the web, on your phone, on a new device etc, the messages need to be synced to you from somewhere, and that's again the service provider's central server. All messaging services do this. These days, some encrypt your messages, but not even remotely all.
- rbbydotdev 8mo agoUSA, which prides itself on freedoms, seems to have conceded a great deal of them when it comes to life online. From Apple apps, GPDR, now this. It sucks to see what we are missing out on.
- Ylpertnodi 8mo agoGDPR?
- rbbydotdev 8mo agoThank you
- yosito 8mo agoUS "freedom" is more propaganda than reality, and that's becoming more and more apparent.
- znpy 8mo ago> WhatsApp is currently rolling out interoperability support across Europe. Does this mean i can chat with my whatsapp contacts without the whatsapp official app? I've been hating that for years. I'd love to be able to get rid of it somehow.
- wolvoleo 8mo agoThis will be really happy news for both birdychat users. Ps: joking aside, this is kinda malicious compliance of WhatsApp, picking a chat app nobody uses.
- freakynit 8mo agoI summarized all comments using LLM for better reading: https://hn-discussions.top/whatsapp-interoperability-europe/ https://hn-discussions.top/whatsapp-interoperability-europe/