Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could even be Turkey west of the Bosphorus. They can fabricate the product in Bursa and do final assembly in West-Istanbul.
Or Russia...
Correct, Russia is in both Europe and Asia.
BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
161–170 of 517 posts
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> obviously against their interests Would love to know how it is "obviously" against my interest to make a chat app and have 3.3 billion users adressable instantly. Bad for internet health to be still tied to Meta, sure, but the damage was done and this is a way to reverse it.
Why would you spend a lot of money to make a better app for whatsapp and let them keep all the revenue? You won't get enough people to pay you money to use your app to make it profitable. If you think you will, then you have a business already; go build it!
> keep all the revenue
Which revenue? Whatsapp is for free, those 3.3 billion people use it for free, the revenue is the reselling of user data and showing them ads. Which they would do less with a 3rd party client, and as such Meta fights it tooth and nail.
> You won't get enough people to pay you money to use your app
It might surprise you but people build apps just for fun, free and open source for others to use, just to make the world better. Which really would be in this case, that's also the intention of this law.
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 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.
Is 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 th…
I know that there is a regulated meaning—at least for food—even down to the region (Scotch, Chianti, Champagne, etc.) or even city (Modena, for balsamic vinegar), but laws aren't the same in every country.
"Made in EU" would be equivalent to "Made in USA", and I'm pretty sure it's regulated.
This is just an app though, so they can say whatever they want. I've seen "Made with love", "Made on Earth", etc.
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
It 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.
What would they think about a “Slack” at work
They would probably cut them some slack and buy it anyways.
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#165I 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
I loved Pigdin! The UI and brand was so good, too, for Linux back in the day...
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#166> 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.
Yep, 100% malicious compliance on Meta's part. I hope they get punished for this.
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal's UX is years behind even modern WhatsApp, let alone Telegram, which is closer to a blogging or social platform. We can't expect mass adoption of such a clunky app simply because it's more private – it has never worked that way.
Maybe I'm old, but there is nothing I use in WhatsApp that does not exist in Signal. What are you missing there?
Various group features like communities and group voice chats, public channels, voice message transcription, only three sticker packs and no obvious way to add my own, backup is still marked as beta in 2026, no business features while all business here use WhatsApp in one way or another…
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> 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.
Nah it’s privacy. Gotta get consent from users. Cookies, GDPR, and all. Meta has learned from their fines, and isn’t opting users automatically into features.
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#169That 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?
Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp
#170I'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