WhatsApp Will Soon Support Third-Party Chat Applications

(CTN News) – With a month to go before the deadline for the Digital Markets Act (DMA), WhatsApp is preparing to allow other messaging networks to be included in its app.

Dick Brouwer, an engineering director at WhatsApp, told Wired the company is ready to offer interoperability on its platform with over 2 billion users.

In addition, there is a real tension between facilitating this interoperability for third parties while maintaining WhatsApp’s privacy, security, and integrity standards. “I think we have landed pretty well,” he said.

It was agreed by the EU that messaging interoperability would be included in DMA by 2022. By adopting this rule, gatekeepers such as WhatsApp and Messenger are required to allow other chat apps to use their services.

Messenger will also support other chat apps in the future, according to Meta. It is anticipated that these experiences will initially focus on one-on-one chats where users can send text, audio, video, images, and files between apps. According to WABetaInfo, third-party chats will be available via a new menu item on top of the inbox titled “Third-party chats.”

It is anticipated that this will be an opt-in experience to prevent spam and scams, according to Brouwer, who was responsible for rolling out end-to-end encryption for Messenger last year.

As a participant, I may choose whether or not to be open to exchanging messages with third parties. This is important, as it could lead to an increase in spam and scams,” he stated.

In order to be interoperable with Meta’s system, companies must sign an agreement, the details of which have not yet been released. In order to enable interoperability, WhatsApp will require end-to-end encryption. There is, however, a possibility that the terms might not be as straightforward as they seem, given Apple’s recent announcements regarding the App Store.

During a recent talk, Matrix’s founder Matthew Hodgson noted that the protocol has been working with WhatsApp on an “experimental” basis in order to ensure that end-to-end encryption is maintained.

It is not clear if other operators, including Telegram, Viber, and Google, are planning to add interoperability support to WhatsApp.

According to Brouwer, third-party chats and WhatsApp native chats may not reach feature parity because interoperability would raise new privacy and security concerns.

During the last few months, multiple messaging apps have been in the spotlight. WordPress.com owner Automattic acquired Texts.com for $50 million last October. Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky’s Beeper is in the news for its attempt to bring iMessage to Android devices – which Apple shut down.

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