WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
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WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#2The legal claims seem spurious at best. The letter provides a list of infringements and claims that each of them is violated. I’ve not used the (claimed) offending apps, but from an overview understanding of how they work it seems like precisely no items from the list would be true.
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#3> Can’t Talk‘s premise is simple. All it does is automatically reply to people when you aren’t around, making use of the quick reply (RemoteInput) API native to Android. […] It’s a paid application if you want to support more than SMS and calls, such as WhatsApp, Slack, and a lot more.
> DirectChat is another useful application. It works just like Facebook Messenger’s chat bubbles but it supports a lot of different applications too. It feeds your chats into another window where you can then reply back as well. Its most popular usage was probably with WhatsApp.
I think the "Cease and Desist" letters are being sent because these two specific apps, unless there are others not mentioned by these article, are making use of APIs that are not directly part of WhatsApp but interact with it in a kind of direct way.
I wonder if the letters were sent directly to the developers or via Google Play.
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#4The legal claims seem spurious at best. The letter provides a list of infringements and claims that each of them is violated. I’ve not used the (claimed) offending apps, but from an overview understanding of how they work it seems like precisely no items from the list would be true.
Hopefully the app creators that received those notices are in a jurisdiction with good anti-SLAPP laws. If they really are only using Android APIs and not accessing WhatsApp through any other means, the claims are clearly designed to intimidate them into removing their apps and settling rather than go through a prolonged lawsuit that Facebook can easily afford, but small developers can't.
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#5> This letter is not a complete list of all of WhatsApp's rights you might have violated.
Fortunately they added this statement because (IANAL) I believe those developers didn't perform any of the activities listed in the bullet points of the letter.
However all of third party WhatsApp automation is a gray area. Everybody knows that WhatsApp doesn't welcome it (I really don't know why) and they have the money to litigate, especially because no big business will ever build anything on the top of WhatsApp without a previous explicit consent. For example a bot API. I never understood why they didn't implement one. I hoped that after the FB acquisition they would, an exact copy of the Messenger one, but they still didn't. Now that all the founders left maybe things will change but I wonder what's FB's plan. WhatsApp is bigger than Messenger in many countries and with the EU stance against data sharing between the two companies I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to Messenger.
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#6> This letter is not a complete list of all of WhatsApp's rights you might have violated. Fortunately they added this statement because (IANAL) I believe those developers didn't perform any of the activities listed in the bullet points of the letter. However all of third party WhatsApp automation is a gray area. Everybody knows that WhatsApp doesn't welcome it (I really don't know why) and they have the money to liti…
> I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to Messenger.
People use WhatsApp over messenger primarily because how "light" the app feels. It feels exactly like SMS for free, which was always the appeal of the app. Given the trend to make a Lite version of every Android app, Facebook should be prioritising WhatsApp, not planning to migrate it to Messenger.
PS - Has a mass migration of community from one product to the other ever been successfully pulled off?
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#7> This letter is not a complete list of all of WhatsApp's rights you might have violated. Fortunately they added this statement because (IANAL) I believe those developers didn't perform any of the activities listed in the bullet points of the letter. However all of third party WhatsApp automation is a gray area. Everybody knows that WhatsApp doesn't welcome it (I really don't know why) and they have the money to liti…
> I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to Messenger. People use WhatsApp over messenger primarily because how "light" the app feels. It feels exactly like SMS for free, which was always the appeal of the app. Given the trend to make a Lite version of every Android app, Facebook should be prioritising WhatsApp, not planning to migrate it to Messenger. PS - Has a mass migration of community…
Digg to Reddit? Ha. Probably not what you were asking, I assume you actually mean within the same company?
Tencent did a reasonable job of migrating a lot of people to WeChat from QQ, but then again QQ is also still alive and used, so it wasn't a full/complete migration.
Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#8The legal claims seem spurious at best. The letter provides a list of infringements and claims that each of them is violated. I’ve not used the (claimed) offending apps, but from an overview understanding of how they work it seems like precisely no items from the list would be true.
Hopefully the app creators that received those notices are in a jurisdiction with good anti-SLAPP laws. If they really are only using Android APIs and not accessing WhatsApp through any other means, the claims are clearly designed to intimidate them into removing their apps and settling rather than go through a prolonged lawsuit that Facebook can easily afford, but small developers can't.
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Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#9The legal claims seem spurious at best. The letter provides a list of infringements and claims that each of them is violated. I’ve not used the (claimed) offending apps, but from an overview understanding of how they work it seems like precisely no items from the list would be true.
Hopefully the app creators that received those notices are in a jurisdiction with good anti-SLAPP laws. If they really are only using Android APIs and not accessing WhatsApp through any other means, the claims are clearly designed to intimidate them into removing their apps and settling rather than go through a prolonged lawsuit that Facebook can easily afford, but small developers can't.
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Re: WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs
#10> Can’t Talk‘s premise is simple. All it does is automatically reply to people when you aren’t around, making use of the quick reply (RemoteInput) API native to Android. […] It’s a paid application if you want to support more than SMS and calls, such as WhatsApp, Slack, and a lot more. > DirectChat is another useful application. It works just like Facebook Messenger’s chat bubbles but it supports a lot of different a…
You are right, they dont interact with whatsapp directly, but indirectly through a android API. The android API cannot be covered by the whatsapp terms (which the developers never agreed to according to the title)