The European Commission has recently designated the names of the gatekeepers who in Europe are called upon to adapt to the severe Digital Market Act (DMA) regulation which, among other things, requires digital services to become interoperable with third-party platforms. Based on what has also been established WhatsApp it must become compatible with others messaging app encouraging the exchange of messages with the latter. All by the deadline of March 2024.
A screen has appeared in the latest beta version of WhatsApp Third party chat which represents an unequivocal indication of the innovation on which the technicians of the company held by Meta are working.
L’interoperability prescribed by law will allow other people to contact WhatsApp users even if they do not have a WhatsApp account. For example, a user using the messaging app Signal could send a message to a WhatsApp user, even without ever having used that platform.
The scheme established in DMAwhich the legislator intends to avoid the imposition of unfair conditions by gatekeepers and aims to ensure the opening of the most important digital services, cannot fail to have a significant impact on the ways in which end-to-end encryption is implemented.
Obviously neither WhatsApp nor the “parent company” Meta make any predictions about how the section will work Third party chat of the application.
How interoperability between WhatsApp and other messaging clients could work
Allow instant messaging platforms that use communication mechanisms to communicate crittografia end-to-end diverse is a complex and delicate challenge. End-to-end encryption is designed to ensure that only the sender and recipient of a message can read it, making it extremely difficult for third parties to intercept or decrypt it.
An ideal solution would be the adoption of encryption standards common across all messaging platforms. However, this option is perhaps the most unlikely of all. Over the years, the developers of the various messaging solutions have repeatedly criticized the solutions adopted by others, highlighting their defects and underlining the benefits of their own.
It is likely, however, that special provisions will be put in place gateway which act as an interface between the different messaging platforms. The messages, however, should pass in encrypted form up to the gateway and then be transferred to the other platform using a different “recipe”.
Even more likely, given that WhatsApp’s declared intent is to maintain end-to-end encryption throughout communication channeltherefore from sender to recipient, the company could make available API e SDK (software development kit) to integrate its solution into other messaging apps. In this way, WhatsApp would only expose what is strictly necessary, would be in compliance with European provisions and would shift the burden of possibly integrating its services onto third parties.
Opening image credit: iStock.com/oatawa