WhatsApp has become integral to the lives of South African smartphone users. It’s one of the first apps most of us install when we get a new phone. To a large degree, using it is how we communicate digitally with friends and loved ones. It’s also used widely in business.
Now big adjustments are coming to the ubiquitous chat platform. They could change not only the way we use WhatsApp but also the competitive dynamics around instant messaging services.
The changes are being forced on Meta Platforms, which owns the app, by the EU’s sweeping new Digital Markets Act. They may — will, probably — be rolled out worldwide; limiting them to the EU wouldn’t make sense, given the global nature of messaging services, but that this will happen has not been confirmed.
The changes will allow integration with third-party chat apps — possibly the likes of Signal, Facebook Messenger and Telegram — without users having to install those apps. In other words, if supported by the Signal app, a Signal user and a WhatsApp user should be able to chat to one another without ever having to install both apps.
But getting there is technically complex and fraught with potential problems around security and privacy.
The introduction of this new feature will mark a significant break from the current situation of users having to jump between siloed messaging apps. In South Africa, this is less of a problem, as most people have standardised on WhatsApp. But in countries like the US, where no single platform truly dominates, the impact could be huge.
WhatsApp’s move is likely to be widely welcomed by users frustrated with switching between messaging apps and those, like the EU competition mandarins, who believe it will help prevent market dominance by a single platform and allow smaller messaging platforms to gain a toehold in the market.
So the news at the weekend that WhatsApp has begun testing the feature publicly in a pre-release version of the software was significant. And WhatsApp is promising that support for third-party messaging apps won’t break the end-to-end encryption that protects people’s communication from prying eyes — though the proof of that will be in the pudding.
It will reportedly be made clear ... that these chats cannot be considered as secure and private as those sent directly between WhatsApp users
Dick Brouwer, engineering director at WhatsApp, told the Wired website: “There’s real tension between offering an easy way to [present] this interoperability to third parties while at the same time preserving the WhatsApp privacy, security and integrity bar. I think we’re pretty happy with where we’ve landed.”
The EU’s Digital Markets Act — which has designated six big tech firms, including Meta, as having “gatekeeper” status — means there is urgency in getting the feature introduced soon, with a deadline to do so now only weeks away. The other “gatekeepers” identified by the EU are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), ByteDance (TikTok) and Amazon. Apple has won exemption for its iMessage system, though, as it’s not popular in the EU. It means the company won’t have to open its famously impenetrable “walled garden” to accommodate third-party messengers like WhatsApp.
According to the report by Wired, WhatsApp’s support for third-party messaging platforms will work only for person-to-person messages for now (for sending texts, images, voice notes, videos and files). Group messaging and voice calls — which are much more complicated to implement — will follow much later.
Importantly, the feature will be opt-in only. This makes sense, especially given the volume of spam messages on some messaging platforms.
Here’s how it will work for WhatsApp users: when the app is enabled, they will see a separate inbox at the top of the app for third-party chats. The inbox will show which chat app a third party is using. The third-party app must support end-to-end encryption, though it will also reportedly be made clear by WhatsApp that these chats cannot be considered as secure and private as those sent directly between WhatsApp users.
WABetaInfo, a specialist blog that covers news about WhatsApp, reported at the weekend that the new feature will allow users to choose which third-party apps they are prepared to integrate into WhatsApp, giving them full autonomy in deciding the level of integration they are comfortable with.
Whether the changes mandated by the EU will have a meaningful effect on competition in digital platforms that, by their very nature, tend towards a monopoly, probably won’t be known for years yet. For now, and until more is known, users enabling this feature when it becomes available should probably assume third-party chats are not safe from snoops.
* McLeod is editor of TechCentral
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