Would this also require Signal to provide an open client API for messaging by 3rd party clients?
New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
81–90 of 145 posts
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would requiring interoperability rob Moxie of his vision?
More importantly who is Moxie?
Yeah, that could have used a citation indeed. I use Moxie [0] because he is a face to a popular messaging app (Signal [1]), and I think it is important to realize he is the brain behind this wonderful creation.
Try putting yourself in his shoes as the government contemplates publicly about how they are going to force some changes to the project you build based on your very private vision of privacy and subsequently made available for free to millions, based on your hard work.
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#83Just force monopolistic/abusive/anti-competitive companies to expose API's ; it's not a stretch; they did it for banks (psd2) and it's great for consumers and companies alike. Do it for everything; open systems make the world better. And they can still be monetized; it's not like forcing everyone to open source everything. Edit: more subtle choice of words to indicate what I meant
As someone who works on a SaaS product, one of our biggest costs is our stable API surface. Internal APIs are essentially free, but for a public API we have to: - Implement a conversion layer from our internal representation so we can keep it stable. - Complicate all further feature work because we have to consider how it will affect existing customers of the API. - Write and maintain documentation for the API. - Kee…
It should be easy to make exceptions for smaller companies/services, and put the rule into force for larger services. Also, the API doesn't need to be stabilized. If Whatsapp wouldn't send DCMA notices to developers of third party clients, and ban users of such, it would be a good start already.
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#84Just force monopolistic/abusive/anti-competitive companies to expose API's ; it's not a stretch; they did it for banks (psd2) and it's great for consumers and companies alike. Do it for everything; open systems make the world better. And they can still be monetized; it's not like forcing everyone to open source everything. Edit: more subtle choice of words to indicate what I meant
Agree! But first, can you point me to e-lab.nl's open API?
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#85Why did we as consumers accept this? I remember back when MSN/Windows Live Messenger used to be one of the most popular options out there. Even though I used Ubuntu, I could still chat with my friends through the Pidgin messenger. This was all possible through the XMPP interface, which still exists by the way. It's not just that these new messaging platforms are adding no extra value, they are creating worse experien…
How easy is it to send full quality videos and pictures via XMPP? I feel like the main difference from my Pidgin days and today is that these days there is a metric ton of large media files being sent around.
It's as easy as via any other method. XMPP supports both server-intermediated transfers (where the file is uploaded to the server - this is what almost all platforms choose to do these days), but it also supports negotiated p2p streamed transfers (suitable for huge files, essentially unlimited, but less reliable, e.g. it requires both sender and recipient to be online at the same time).
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most social media companies' businesses models rely on having complete control over the presentation of content. Forcing them to allow third-party client apps would ruin that, and it's going to be beautiful.
Complete control of the presentation of content, editorializing said content, and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t allowed. And they also still don’t want to be treated as publishers. It’s hard for me to muster up even the smallest amount of sympathy for these vampires. I expect this will take a decade to shake out as US tech firms work tirelessly to protect their spyware walled garden models.
Can you explain what TikTok does differently that makes it so open and free compared to evil US tech companies?
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Beyond privacy concerns, it’s also going to open these and many other services up to an unending wave of SPAM. So, I wouldn’t assume it’s great for end users without digging into the details. Don’t forget the last time they did privacy regulations they created an unending wave of click yes to accept cookies. PS: Looking at rapid downvotes I see people disagree, but mandatory interoperability would presumably force th…
Isn't this generally taken care of by only allowing messages from numbers that are in your contact list?
That approach doesn’t work for something like Tinder. It’s also kind of a pain rather than just letting everyone message you on a platform without SPAM.
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#88This is almost too good to actually go through. Protocol transparency, that is to say forcing companies to open up their APIs would be one of the simplest and effective ways to break platform effects and walled gardens. It shouldn't just be limited to messaging. An internet where everyone can built a client against Facebook's API, or Youtube or what have you and users get actual choice and control about how they cons…
Er, WhatsApp is based on Noise for client server protocol, and Signal protocol for peer to peer encryption. Both were open standards before WhatsApp implemented them.
I dunno how to say this but Noise is really a set of possible handshakes with various security guarantees (or, more like, aims, which we are reasonably sure are met), which kinda followed on from X3DH/Signal Protocol. I'm unsure how you got that Noise is a client-server protocol and Signal is peer to peer. When you send a whatsapp message you still send it to WhatsApp servers and the client-server protocol here is probably just TLS. Likewise, when you receive it, probably TLS also. However that message is encrypted "end-to-end" in the sense that the server cannot decrypt the actual message payload on the way. Noise _also_ enables this. Critically this is not peer-to-peer: the clients are still relaying messages via a central server.
Peer-to-peer communication in WhatsApp in the network topology sense happens where possible when making Voice and Video calls, as this is probably WebRTC-derived (it is WebRTC in everything else these days), which concretely involves some kind of call signalling, then p2p setup to talk RTP if possible. This is not Signal Protocol or Noise: it is most likely the S in SRTP with key agreement done over the Signal Protocol. In other words, no key ratcheting between voice or video packets. I'm actually not sure if the session key is ever changed for a given call. To make this clear: call setup happens via a central server but the media streams will go from your IP to theirs directly, if possible (or proxied via WhatsApp if not). The reason for doing calls p2p like this is where possible is to reduce latency.
This is also, last time I looked, true of Signal. We are good at end-to-end text. We are less good at voice/video, particularly voice/video group calls that might not be p2p-able and rather require the server to do something with the RTP streams.
Now, what you're actually missing is that WhatsApp was in its early days based on a fork of ejabberd, the Erlang XMPP Server, with if I understand correctly custom extensions. Thus WhatsApp actually was at some stage somewhat compatible with open standards.
We've also kinda been here before. Google Talk used to interoperate with XMPP just fine and at one stage my own XMPP server could talk to my friends on Google Talk and they'd pretty much not notice.
I agree however that it would be better to have a new protocol that starts based on end to end key agreement like Signal/Noise, rather than use XMPP. Or perhaps use XMPP _inside_ this protocol. This is because "opt-in" crypto is a disaster that probably has happened. Signal and Noise are also missing what the body of those messages should look like and standards for agreeing for example calls, media transfer and so on, basically all the non-crypto parts.
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#89Just force monopolistic/abusive/anti-competitive companies to expose API's ; it's not a stretch; they did it for banks (psd2) and it's great for consumers and companies alike. Do it for everything; open systems make the world better. And they can still be monetized; it's not like forcing everyone to open source everything. Edit: more subtle choice of words to indicate what I meant
I believe forcing to expose APIs would kill messengers which are built around a single feature (like snapchat).
The idea behind snapchat is that it's hard for users to save images without notifying the opposite party. You wouldn't be able to enforce this with third party clients.
Re: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other platforms
#90I miss the days when I could fire up Pidgin (or Gaim when I started using it) and instantly connect to every IM service I ever needed. Hopefully this is a step back towards that.
Same here. That's why I paid to use beeper. It's amazing to have all my chats in one app again. (Not affiliated just love the experience)
I thought Whatsapp user terms phorbid users from using third-party clients. People were banned for that.