7 ms·

> 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

> 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.

dfajgljsldkjag 8mo ago
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.
- echelon 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jstummbillig 8mo ago
    > This is fucking malicious compliance. Meta knows what they're doing. And so do the courts. Give them some time to cook. How goes the popular American saying: We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.
    - echelon 8mo ago
      How long? Lina Khan didn't move fast enough, then she was shown the door. Maybe the EU will persist where the US FTC/DOJ could not?
    - Nextgrid 8mo ago
      > Give them some time to cook How long? I'm still waiting for the GDPR to actually be enforced meaningfully.
      - jstummbillig 8mo ago
        How is it not enforced "meaningfully"? (I don't know what is meaningful to you)
        Nextgrid 8mo ago
        Here's a good overview: https://noyb.eu/en/data-protection-day-are-europeans-really-protected https://noyb.eu/en/data-protection-day-are-europeans-really-... It's several years old by now but nothing has changed. It is still more profitable to breach the GDPR than to comply with it.
      - gf000 8mo ago
        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.
        Nextgrid 8mo ago
        Can != will. > 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.
        reedciccio 8mo ago
        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.
        pastage 8mo ago
        Not full filling your wishes can still mean useful. Be very specific when you critize the only set of laws that has done anything for users.
    - _3u10 8mo ago
      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.
  - irishcoffee 8mo ago
    > This is fucking malicious compliance. Meta knows what they're doing. Wait, you mean passing feel-good legislation has knock-on effects? Who would have thought?
    - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
      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.
      - irishcoffee 8mo ago
        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.
    - schubidubiduba 8mo ago
      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
  - ronsor 8mo ago
    > 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.
    - direwolf20 8mo ago
      That depends which group is offering more money today. Gemini is integrated into the search and comes before any results so it might not need any ads.
    - philipallstar 8mo ago
      What web standard is this?
  - drnick1 8mo ago
    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.)
thisislife2 8mo ago
Could you clarify - What has been implemented as opt-in by WhatsApp to act as a hurdle?
- odo1242 8mo ago
  Receiving message requests from third-party users. So you have to get the person you know to flip a toggle before they get the message.
  - thisislife2 8mo ago
    Is this a per-contact setting or a "universal" one?
    - dfajgljsldkjag 8mo ago
      Each whatsapp user needs to enable the setting once to allow chats with multiple number of third party users.
    - odo1242 8mo ago
      Account-wide. Though you can only turn it on in Europe.
      - benj111 8mo ago
        When you say Europe you mean the EU? I'm not seeing an option in the UK. (Yay Brexit)
        riffraff 8mo ago
        Yeah it's the EU, this is a result of the DMA regulation. I suppose the British government could enact a similar regulation tho.
    - zeeZ 8mo ago
      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
InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
Yep, 100% malicious compliance on Meta's part. I hope they get punished for this.
- mlrtime 8mo ago
  How so exactly? They can say they are keeping conversations secure from 3rd parties.
  - sagarm 8mo ago
    That doesn't make sense -- the parties to the conversation already _have_ the messages. Spam prevention is a likely angle, however. EU should force it to be opt-out, not opt-in -- probably what people want anyway.
    - speleding 8mo ago
      I would like to be opted out by default. I'm worried at least one of those new services is going to get overrun by spammers, and if I'm opted in by default they could use the gateway to whatsapp to spam everyone else.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo ago
How the opt-in is considered acceptable, that's a toothless resolution
- tonyhart7 8mo ago
  because its EU only ????? you want it to be enabled by default while only certain amount of people want to use it
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo ago
    Is it auto enabled on eu phones? If not, to ne it's not compliant
dmitrygr 8mo ago
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
- lxgr 8mo ago
  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.
  - dmitrygr 8mo ago
    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...
    - direwolf20 8mo ago
      Several people have scraped every possible phone number from WhatsApp so they know your name, picture, and status if they want it.
      - mlrtime 8mo ago
prmoustache 8mo ago
> 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.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  >The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. 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.
  - neves 8mo ago
    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
    - fooker 8mo ago
      > It's not a technical problem How do you do encryption?
      - zrm 8mo ago
        A probable implementation is that you bootstrap the initial key exchange using web PKI (if you want to talk to Alice@example.com then your client makes a TLS connection to example.com and asks for Alice's public key) and thereafter you use something like the Signal ratchet thing.
        lazide 8mo ago
        That technical solution is significant and unsolved. I don’t think it would likely work without some major new standards either.
zoobab 8mo ago
"opt-in" FAIL
raverbashing 8mo ago
> as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side Chatting with anyone has always been opt in from the point of the receiver, so I don't get your point?
urbandw311er 8mo ago
> any BirdyChat user And how many of these are there? Anyone?
moffkalast 8mo ago
I thought the stupid name was enough to kill it tbh. I'm not telling anyone they can call me on "birdychat" lmao.
- lpcvoid 8mo ago
  While I also don't think Birdychat is a good name, you could also argue that "Whatsapp" is a weird name for an app billions of people use.
  - jrowen 8mo ago
    WhatsApp is a bizarre name, and I think that contributes to it occupying a "lower rent" space than the others (the goofy chat background also helps). But I think most people ultimately gloss over the joke and it just becomes kind of abstract. With BirdyChat though, it feels like you'll be confronted by its silliness in perpetuity.
wohoef 8mo ago
Just opened my Whatsapp settings and "Third-party chat requests" is on by default (From the Netherlands). Although to actually receive messages you do have to activate this feature.

dfajgljsldkjag 8mo ago

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.

echelon 8mo ago
[flagged]
- jstummbillig 8mo ago
  > This is fucking malicious compliance. Meta knows what they're doing. And so do the courts. Give them some time to cook. How goes the popular American saying: We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.
  - echelon 8mo ago
    How long? Lina Khan didn't move fast enough, then she was shown the door. Maybe the EU will persist where the US FTC/DOJ could not?
  - Nextgrid 8mo ago
    > Give them some time to cook How long? I'm still waiting for the GDPR to actually be enforced meaningfully.
    - jstummbillig 8mo ago
      How is it not enforced "meaningfully"? (I don't know what is meaningful to you)
      - Nextgrid 8mo ago
        Here's a good overview: https://noyb.eu/en/data-protection-day-are-europeans-really-protected https://noyb.eu/en/data-protection-day-are-europeans-really-... It's several years old by now but nothing has changed. It is still more profitable to breach the GDPR than to comply with it.
    - gf000 8mo ago
      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.
      - Nextgrid 8mo ago
        Can != will. > 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.
      - reedciccio 8mo ago
        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.
        pastage 8mo ago
        Not full filling your wishes can still mean useful. Be very specific when you critize the only set of laws that has done anything for users.
  - _3u10 8mo ago
    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.
- irishcoffee 8mo ago
  > This is fucking malicious compliance. Meta knows what they're doing. Wait, you mean passing feel-good legislation has knock-on effects? Who would have thought?
  - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
    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.
    - irishcoffee 8mo ago
      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.
  - schubidubiduba 8mo ago
    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
- ronsor 8mo ago
  > 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.
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    That depends which group is offering more money today. Gemini is integrated into the search and comes before any results so it might not need any ads.
  - philipallstar 8mo ago
    What web standard is this?
- drnick1 8mo ago
  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.)

thisislife2 8mo ago

Could you clarify - What has been implemented as opt-in by WhatsApp to act as a hurdle?

odo1242 8mo ago
Receiving message requests from third-party users. So you have to get the person you know to flip a toggle before they get the message.
- thisislife2 8mo ago
  Is this a per-contact setting or a "universal" one?
  - dfajgljsldkjag 8mo ago
    Each whatsapp user needs to enable the setting once to allow chats with multiple number of third party users.
  - odo1242 8mo ago
    Account-wide. Though you can only turn it on in Europe.
    - benj111 8mo ago
      When you say Europe you mean the EU? I'm not seeing an option in the UK. (Yay Brexit)
      - riffraff 8mo ago
        Yeah it's the EU, this is a result of the DMA regulation. I suppose the British government could enact a similar regulation tho.
  - zeeZ 8mo ago
    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

InsideOutSanta 8mo ago

Yep, 100% malicious compliance on Meta's part. I hope they get punished for this.

mlrtime 8mo ago
How so exactly? They can say they are keeping conversations secure from 3rd parties.
- sagarm 8mo ago
  That doesn't make sense -- the parties to the conversation already _have_ the messages. Spam prevention is a likely angle, however. EU should force it to be opt-out, not opt-in -- probably what people want anyway.
  - speleding 8mo ago
    I would like to be opted out by default. I'm worried at least one of those new services is going to get overrun by spammers, and if I'm opted in by default they could use the gateway to whatsapp to spam everyone else.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo ago

How the opt-in is considered acceptable, that's a toothless resolution

tonyhart7 8mo ago
because its EU only ????? you want it to be enabled by default while only certain amount of people want to use it
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo ago
  Is it auto enabled on eu phones? If not, to ne it's not compliant

dmitrygr 8mo ago

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

lxgr 8mo ago
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.
- dmitrygr 8mo ago
  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...
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    Several people have scraped every possible phone number from WhatsApp so they know your name, picture, and status if they want it.
    - mlrtime 8mo ago

prmoustache 8mo ago

> 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.

joe_mamba 8mo ago
>The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. 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.
- neves 8mo ago
  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
  - fooker 8mo ago
    > It's not a technical problem How do you do encryption?
    - zrm 8mo ago
      A probable implementation is that you bootstrap the initial key exchange using web PKI (if you want to talk to Alice@example.com then your client makes a TLS connection to example.com and asks for Alice's public key) and thereafter you use something like the Signal ratchet thing.
      - lazide 8mo ago
        That technical solution is significant and unsolved. I don’t think it would likely work without some major new standards either.

zoobab 8mo ago

"opt-in" FAIL

raverbashing 8mo ago

> as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side Chatting with anyone has always been opt in from the point of the receiver, so I don't get your point?

urbandw311er 8mo ago

> any BirdyChat user And how many of these are there? Anyone?

moffkalast 8mo ago

I thought the stupid name was enough to kill it tbh. I'm not telling anyone they can call me on "birdychat" lmao.

lpcvoid 8mo ago
While I also don't think Birdychat is a good name, you could also argue that "Whatsapp" is a weird name for an app billions of people use.
- jrowen 8mo ago
  WhatsApp is a bizarre name, and I think that contributes to it occupying a "lower rent" space than the others (the goofy chat background also helps). But I think most people ultimately gloss over the joke and it just becomes kind of abstract. With BirdyChat though, it feels like you'll be confronted by its silliness in perpetuity.

wohoef 8mo ago

Just opened my Whatsapp settings and "Third-party chat requests" is on by default (From the Netherlands). Although to actually receive messages you do have to activate this feature.