PieFedWhatsApp is launching third-party chat support across EU Countries, which means you can now ditch WhatsApp for an EU alternative: BirdyChat from Latvia.
Ek-Hou-Van-Braai
forums.macrumors.com/threads/whatsapp-launching…
WhatsApp is close to rolling out third-party chat support across the European Union, as part its compliance with the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA)…
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CubitOomAnything Meta touches should be considered suspicious. Especially when it comes to privacy.
They let OpenWhisper do the underlying protocol, so it’s solid. Beats the shit out of a plain text message anyway, and people IRL might actually have it.
Lime Buzz (fae/she)
MrSoupI wonder how they’ve choose these platforms. Haiket.com doesn’t even come out by lookin it up on duckduckgo.
BirdyChat is under limited access. Must wait in waitlist or have an invite from someone already in. Plus they say on their site its “access is limited to professionals”.
Also, obviously, none of these are foss.
Then seems like they may have chosen these platforms because they’re not accessible and thus not threatening, in a malicious compliance way
Although, giving them the benefit of doubt, perhaps they wanted a low blast radius for their first integration rollout, which is considered good engineering practice.
leftascenterAnd birdychat is professional only.
KissakiThe Haiket website doesn’t seem to disclose anything about the people, company, org, or group behind it.
The privacy policy does not disclose them as processors by name either.
The privacy policy GDPR section does not talk about shared information, presumably because they don’t because they can’t without consent, but the California section says:
Please see the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” section and “Limit the Use or Disclosure of My Sensitive Personal Information” section for more information on how to opt out and limit the use of sensitive information collected.
Implying a default no-explicit-consent selling of personal and sensitive personal information outside of the GDPR regions.
VitteliusThey don’t choose the platform, the platforms choose them. Under EU regulation WhatsApp as a “gatekeeper” has to give access to any other platform operating in the EU if they request it. Threema, Signal and co simply aren’t interested.
So anyone from Europe can ask it? And only these two showed up?
thingsiplay
☂️-can i take advantage of it outside europe?
Wasn’t Element going to integrate into it as well?
OoopsElement uses the Matrix open standard which supports bridges. I don’t know if the WhatsApp bridge uses the web interface or API for the PC desktop app, but that one is working for quite some time already.
For people not wanting to configure it all from scratch there are already pre-build complete packages bundling up all your usual messengers in one location/app like Beeper.
Yeah, but they were talking about building out WhatsApp third party compatibility on top of it.
There already was Element One, which bridged to a bunch of things for a small subscription fee, although it had to break E2EE to do so. I’m just finding a lot of broken links now, though.
u_tamtamElement says lots of things.
Or don’t use apps and services run by oligarchs and Nazi shitheads in the first place… FOMO is a helluva drug.
Instant messaging apps are famously easy to switch because most people use them for the features and not the people they can contact. /s
Very apathetic attitude, be the change you want and the important people that want to contact you will switch. There’s an adjustment period but people will switch if you tell them to contact you via email if they don’t want to install signal/session and break their addiction to oligarchical institutions services.
Big „cut contact with your friends and family over an app” energy.
Big “my family won’t switch for me” copium
5 years ago made the switch with family and friends, only issue was with companies and I just don’t bother with those. If customer service is on what’s app, fuck that corporation.
Near impossible to do in your youth while you’re constantly meeting new people and trying to form new relationships.
Not going to try to convince someone I just met to downland a new app just to talk to me.
Form new relationships with the people that have functioning brains. “Hey, you can contact me on signal, txt or email” is not a difficult thing to say.
Asking someone to download an app is not a big ask. Kids install hundreds of dumb apps all the time. It’s not an acceptable excuse. If they don’t have signal/email/txt just shrug and move on. You don’t have to cater to the peer pressure to use whatever app someone else is using either.
We need to educate kids on online safety and not let them get locked into oligarchic platforms just because of fomo and ignorance.
So what do you suggest we do instead?
I mean… There’s alternatives.
Telegram and Signal are the obvious first choices, although both have their own set of issues.
Matrix is a good contender but it isn’t really beginner friendly, and even if you manage to run your own server or bridges, it’s a PITA to maintain. Beeper is fairly good and allows you to have more control over your messages - but then you’re still bridging into WhatsApp and Messenger and other IMs.
Though pushing your friends to switch to these services can be beneficial at the end, but it ain’t easy. Most people will still call you a conspiracy nut for not liking the fact that megacorporations like Meta have their fingers in every aspect of your life (in fact I’m surprised Amazon hasn’t made their own IM service yet), and replatforming those people is just super hard.
And that’s the thing right?
I use Session and Signal, but use WhatsApp for most of my friends and family.