BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by input_sh » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

lurk2 wrote: post #76

input_sh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct! 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 implementatio…

> 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. […] Alex holds over 10 patents in voice and communication technologies, assigned to and used by Google and Facebook. How does this imply he has any connection to Meta? Companies license patents all the t…

Okay, what about three sentences above that one?

> Before Haiket, Alex founded a number of technology start-ups and helped develop innovative voice solutions for Facebook and Google.

At the very least, I think it's safe to say he has some connections within Meta that he utilised for this purpose. He's definitely not a complete outsider whose startup (with no actual product) just happened to be picked by Meta.

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

#82

Post by hermanzegerman » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

zenmac wrote: post #60

Nextgrid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix 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.

While 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 t…

German Healthcare will also be using Matrix

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

#83

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

ncruces wrote: post #74

altern8 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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..?

Plenty of supermarket products say made in Europe, particularly (but not only) white label products.

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.

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

#84

Post by thwg » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:35 PM UTC

When 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.

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

#85

Post by Bratmon » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

kubb wrote: post #72

input_sh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct! 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 implementatio…

I see a second round of legislation might be needed. They'll get it right eventually.

They never got cookie popups right. What makes you so confident?

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

#86

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

altern8 wrote: post #62

kelnos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the name? "WhatsApp" sounds pretty dumb to me, too, but it's entrenched in the social consciousness, so we don't really think about it. (The name even has nothing to do with chat; originally WhatsApp was a way to share your "current status"; "WhatsApp" sounds like "what's up?".)

I don't think Whatsapp sounds dumb. It's "what's up", and it came out when mobile apps were getting popular with everyone. I immediately got it when I heard it the first time, and it sounded good to me. "BirdyChat" just sounds childish. Maybe I'm in the minority, who knows, but project names are important. I've seen so many posts of people dismissing projects just because of the name...

Gimp would have to be the extreme example of this. I used to recommend Krita to people, despite it being less appropriate for photo editing, just to avoid using 'Gimp' in work/polite scenarios.

I agree - "Birdy" is the name used with infants when talking about birds, or is a bird toy that photographers use to distract people ... which is a bit too close to the truth, perhaps.

To me it also suggests 'a toy version of Twitter'; and Twitter already had enough negativity around it for me.

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

#87

Post by kelnos » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

PEe9bB7D wrote: post #16

B1FIDO wrote: post #6

I 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 un…

Matrix is getting traction though...

Is it? My experience with it has been middling at best, and I communicate with exactly zero people through Matrix outside of the context of open source projects.

The UX is still pretty bad, with many rough edges around sign-in and device verification. The message/encryption story has gotten better (it's been a long time since I've gotten spurious errors about being unable to decrypt messages), but it's still not particularly easy to use. Performance-wise I've found it to still be fairly bad; loading messages after I've been offline takes a noticeable amount of pause, something I rarely see with other messaging platforms.

On the plus side, Matrix does have many chat features that many people like (or even require) in a chat platform, like formatting, emojis, message reactions, threads, etc.

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

#88

Post by vpShane » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

This 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.

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

#89

Post by petre » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #23

B1FIDO wrote: post #6

I 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 un…

We had XMPP, and even Google Chat used that in the early days. It's not like users haven't had choice over the decades to choose software that runs on open standards. It's that the features and UX provided by closed software has been more compelling to them. Open standards and interoperability generally aren't features most people value when it comes to chat. They care mostly about what their friends and family are u…

Google Chat used XMPP to build an user base and then cut it off from the Jabber network. That's when I stopped using it. Or was it when it got integrated into Gmail? Then they rebranded it and binned each iteration several times.

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

#90

Post by vpShane » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #25

PEe9bB7D wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix is getting traction though...

Matrix 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.

It was the invite floods of what was probably CP and cat torture that made me uninstall it and never look back.

No thanks on that. I don't have time or energy for these things.