> 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.
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.
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 stop using an app they've been using for, what, 10-12 years? It’s not that big of a deal; everyone uses Instagram or Facebook (maybe)... WhatsApp is definitely going to make the process difficult, too.
Whatsapp is more popular in the US than you'd think. Probably due to a large immigrant population. I'm in several groups that use the channels feature to organize things like soccer, game nights etc. Most people with family abroad use Whatsapp, and that's a huge portion of the US.
It all depends on age group in my experience. My friends all a bit older than me prefer Messenger for everything. My friends all younger than me prefer Discord. I think my parents and their generation use iMessage, but I use WhatsApp with them. My generation used to use snapchat a lot, I think, but I never got on that boat.
That's interesting; I have and use discord myself (owner of a 300+ member server for my WoW guild), but I've never really considered it a messaging app in the same way I do iMessage, WhatsApp, and so on. I think because everyone is pseudo anonymous, it's more like social media to me. Plus I've got the phone numbers and iMessage groups for close friends I've made over discord.
Given its popularity among gamers of all nationalities, I wonder where discord stacks up in relation to the EU's DMA?
Sounds like an easy fix. Europe just has to convince the rest of the world to ditch the 15 year old popular US apps ingrained in pop culture and with network effects, and have them switch to their own EU made apps, this way we can all communicate together. :hugs: Until then, let's keep chatting on $US_APP so we can debate on how we're gonna achieve that switch.
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.
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"
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.
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 then whatsapp can go.
I find Telegram the best app; its faster and easier than the rest I find. The default no e2e sucks so cannot use it for everything, but having everything immediately ready and working on all devices makes it very nice. When you buy a new one, immediately all is there. Yes, obviously I am aware that can only be because no e2e, but normies and non normies alike seem to really hate the whatsapp, and even more, signal losing all your messages because backup/restore is too annoying. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but if someone manages to make more that experience... I mean turn it around; make e2e the default but allow people to create groups or 1-1 without e2e if they want (knowing then downsides and upsides of that).
It's not really about that but more that other countries start regulating the same way as WhatsApp and that way not all people would switch to these apps but they would have the opportunity to use it and keep talking with their friends and family
It's better than nothing. If you have a different app and want to talk to your friend who uses whatsapp it's much easier to convince him to toggle a setting than to download a different app.
It's because the real solution here is to move away from this proprietary malware to protocols that are open, so that anyone can write or fork a client. (For instance, see Molly for a fully Ungoogled Signal.)
It's difficult when it comes to messengers, but reasonably easy when it comes to Google and Android, for which good alternatives exist (e.g., DuckDuck on GrapheneOS.)
> Or worse - you have a nice trademark for your business or product, and google managed to turn 91% of "URL bars" through "web standards" and unilateral control / anti-competitive practices, turn these into "Google search". You type in Anthropic and instead of seeing their homepage, you see ads for ChatGPT. 50% of Google's revenue is trademark taxation.
This is preposterous. You'd see ads for Gemini, not ChatGPT.
You can get some really hefty fines for not playing by the rules. It's taken extremely seriously in basically every aspect of life in Europe. It's not enforced hard enough against US company empires like meta and the like unfortunately, but it absolutely works.
> It's taken extremely seriously in basically every aspect of life in Europe
Yeah, like every single cookie banner out there not actually being compliant. A regulation can't be considered to be meaningfully enforced when every single storefront openly breaches it in total impunity for years.
Yeah... Ask Schrems about the hefty fines and all that pretty things bright to Europeans by the GDPR. Come on! The GDPR is at best a pretty face to a rotten nothing-burger.
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.
It's not a case of "feel-good legislation", but yeah, this reaction was to be expected. Meta and most other SaaS companies are user-hostile on purpose, not by accident, so it's predictable they'll try to fight it.
That's fair. By feel-good I meant, passing something without trying to see how this would be the reaction. Just put a tiny bit more thought into the edge cases for exploitation. Don't rush it for the moral victory, have cake and eat it too.
That is not the case here. The legislation has been drafted with all of this in mind, and will force Meta to continually improve until the feature is like it should be.
Without Trump making a huge fuss everytime US companies have to do something that can hurt their monopolies, we'd probably already be there
It's a universal setting. You have to enable it per third-party app, though. You get to choose whether you want to see them listed with WhatsApp chats or in a separate folder
I understand my agreement with WhatsApp - i read it and all. I have no agreement with that other app. I do not know what they would do with my data. Until they give me a privacy policy and i approve it, they indeed should have none of my data. Opt-in is the correct solution.
I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant (that app is European and thus must care about GDPR). They do not have my permission to have/handle my private data, and GDPR does not allow WhatAspp to hand it over without my permission either... My name (which whatsapp exposes simply with my phone number) is considered PII under GDPR and
What a strange way to think about a telecommunications service. By the same logic, shouldn’t there be a privacy policy for regular old phone lines? Who knows which third parties are between you and the person on the other end!
And speaking about the other end: I have bad news about all the data you share with untrustworthy contacts on WhatsApp…
Quite practically, anyone that enables backups (which WhatsApp heavily nudges people to do) uploads a copy of all your messages and media sent to them to a cloud provider you have no privacy agreement with.
old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number. whataspp discloses name, picture, status
As for your second comment, updated first comment with:
I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant if that app is European. They do not have my permission to have my private data, and GDPR does not allow whatAspp to hand it over without my permission either...
> old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number.
Old telephone lines most certainly disclosed additional information about you. Who you contacted, when, how often.
Did you call that drug dealer every Tuesday evening? Looks suspicious. Did that criminal call you the day before he robbed a store not far from your home? Looks suspicious. Do you call Pakistan twice a week? Looks suspicious. Have you ever called a suicide prevention hotline? A bank other than your own? A mosque? An independent political party?
Only to who you choose to make it available to. And if you choose “everybody”, I don’t see how you can reasonably expect this to mean “everybody not using third-party software”?
I just don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation of a telecommunications tool, so yeah, I think it’s a fair change well within the norms and expectations of an instant messenger.
You should get to control how/ to whom your data is distributed, but also requiring these recipients to only use software and services of your choosing seems excessive. Platform lock-in at this point seems like the much greater harm.
I could see the case for a small indicator in the contact details that they’re using a third-party client, but anything more (green bubbles?) would be counterproductive.
The recipient is already using third-party code. I am using a Samsung OS, which is not from Meta, to see your messages. Do you object to this? I also have the YouTube PiP overlay layer in front of your messages.
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.