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BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

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Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#371

Post by yapyap »

prmoustache wrote: post #180
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #2

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

… useless FOR YOU. not useless overall. its just that you in your limited use case cannot use it.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#372

Post by chii »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #335
chii wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that is marketing not coding. it's the network effect. If normies who don't care for things (which is most people tbh) don't decide to switch, do you, as a techie/early adopter, just turn off whatsapp and disconnect with your normie friends? You are unlikely to be important enough in the friend group to force a switch, not to mention that this needs to happen enmass for a swing in the network effect to happen.

Being implacably stubborn is underrated. People can trivially have two messaging apps on their phone, which means they can all still contact you while using WhatsApp with other people. Then they all slowly end up with Signal on their phone, at which point who needs WhatsApp at all? "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all pro…

> Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

and only those who actually succeed being unreasonable is remembered. The other unreasonable people simply get forgotten or ignored - the vast majority.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#373

Post by AnssiH »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #359
B1FIDO wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multimedia "texts" are actually MMS. In fact, if you send more than 160 characters, those are also MMS because it's an extension of the SMS standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service It is not unusual for there to be hosting or intermediate storage of images and other files, and from the phone you may tap a link or something to download/access that file, instead of having it automatically do…

Aren’t SMS that are over 160 characters being concatenated? There used to be a standard for that.

Generally yes.

I guess a phone/app could exist that does convert to MMS instead, though, since the app can make that decision.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#374

Post by uyzstvqs »

direwolf20 wrote: post #275
uyzstvqs wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 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 sec…

But WhatsApp is already completely open for spammers. They can use the secret API or screen-scrape WhatsApp itself.

WhatsApp bans spam pretty quickly. Unfiltered spam is much, much worse.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#375

Post by B1FIDO »

nozzlegear wrote: post #222
hei-lima wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In countries where SMS isn't as widespread as it is in the US, the use of WhatsApp is much more common. I live in one of those countries, and I don't think I've ever had to use it to communicate with someone on another continent. I think most of its use is simply local, for your community or friend group. The downside for me is basically the lack of appeal for a non-tech user (like my parents) to voluntarily want to…

SMS isn't widespread in the US, iMessage is.

SMS is very widespread in the United States.

All the B2C services I work with are sending SMS to my phone. Not RCS, not iMessage: they are sending SMS messages.

All the MFA providers, such as Twilio and Okta, are sending SMS.

All the political campaign spammers are sending SMS.

All the reminders for appointments and bills are sending SMS.

All the notifications for apps where Push isn't good enough: they're sending SMS.

If user-to-user communication is using iMessage then that is fine. I have noticed that only about 2 of my human contacts use RCS, and at least 2 of them are using iPhones and not Androids for it. So that's some anecdata for ya!

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#376

Post by ForHackernews »

speleding wrote: post #364
neves wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, 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

Not sure whether you would call this technical, but the difficulty lies in allowing third party access and still prevent spam. The reason Whatsapp won out over competing services in the first place (over here at least) was that they managed to be both free and relatively spam free. All free alternatives quickly got subsumed by spam (even non-free SMS has a spam problem nowadays).

Email has solved that problem already.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#377

Post by maqp »

ivm wrote: post #260
jeroenhd wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal offers a chat app that works fine and is not owned by Meta. That's enough for a significant amount of people to switch already. I'd love some quality of life updates to some of the niche features, like the desktop app, but the mobile app does everything it needs to do. Community chats aren't what keep people on WhatsApp, the network effect does.

Yeah, and to overcome the network effect, you need something compelling enough to justify the effort in the first place. I have hundreds of local contacts on WhatsApp, many of whom have joined Telegram on their own because of its benefits (for example, a local firefighter feed is shared through a channel there). But I only have about 20 contacts on Signal, even IT guys aren’t there. It simply doesn’t offer anything a…

>joined Telegram on their own because of its benefits

Sorry, social media masquerading as a secure messaging app isn't a secure messaging app.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#378

Post by maqp »

jhasse wrote: post #361
direwolf20 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one. It's Signal. I keep telling people to use it and they keep not, because people are less likely to do things if they've been told they should do them.

Signal is so much worse than WhatsApp from a UX perspective. Backup sync forces you to allow background permissions (WhatsApp doesn't), you have to set and get nagged to enter a PIN every few weeks (WhatsApp doesn't), there's no transcription for audio messages (WhatsApp has that for some languages), the desktop app loses its connection if you don't open it ever few weeks (WhatsApp works fine), etc. If you want peopl…

>If you want people to switch, recommend Telegram.

Why would people switch from always-end-to-end encrypted group chats to never-end-to-end encrypted group chats?

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#379

Post by zarzavat »

expedition32 wrote: post #285
tonyhart7 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally mention 2 of the biggest whatsapp competitor and you have audacity to says "Nobody has even bothered to make an app that stands toe-to-toe with WhatsApp"

Besides what WhatsApp does on a technical level can be fairly easily replicated. Getting the 2 billion users is the hard part. But that is marketing not coding.

If it's so easy to replicate, why isn't there any other app that has replicated it?

Signal is the closest but they fall short because they prioritize privacy over features. Which is their choice to make, but it means they have ruled themselves out from going mainstream. If you're not targeting feature parity with WhatsApp then you have zero chance of supplanting it.

Telegram prioritises idk the FSB spying on your chats, that app gives me the creeps.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#380

Post by maqp »

anonzzzies wrote: post #240
Grimblewald wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldnt be hard to convince folks. Everyone i know hates facebook / meta and is just waiting for an agreed upon alternative.

I have lately been telling people whatsapp is from facebook (meta means nothing to them) and now they are looking for alternatives. Unfortunately, there isn't really much european/eu (never heard of birdychat though). It does show though it is not hard to get some people to switch; they have groups on whatsapp and use it for nothing else; these are people they chat with often so they only need to switch those and the…

>working on all devices makes it very nice.

Signal has end-to-end encryption working on all devices. Telegram doesn't because they're amateurs.

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