Comment on To comply with DMA, WhatsApp and Messenger will become interoperable via Signal protocol
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 months agoI’m forgetting the term everyone was throwing around when (Facebook’s) Threads was supposedly going to federate. But the gist of it was that this is an old Big Tech move: small community is created and thrives, big company integrates into the ecosystem, then a couple of years later the big tech company controls that that whole ecosystem.
If Facebook were to completely integrate, I worry they would begin to bring in additional features (maybe like blue chat bubbles for FB users, or bringing back SMS in the app; some feature that you’d only be getting on the FB version of the ecosystem) and use that to begin to strong arm the ecosystem under their control.
There’s probably a Slippery Slope Fallacy in there, but my good will towards Big Tech is minimal after the last decade or so.
CameronDev@programming.dev 6 months ago
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? Google tried to do that to XMPP with hangouts, and it didnt kill XMPP? So I think signal would be fine, and worst case would just break compatibility later. And at least with this new EU law, attempting to extinguish would be met with some level of fines?
Valid concern though.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Yeah, that’d be the principle.
I’m really not sure how this is all gonna pan out, but I know you’re gonna need to offer me something really good to abandon “real” Signal. Not sure if that’s how the rest of the community feels, but I know that’s NOT the way “normal people” feel. If my sentiment is widely shared, maybe it does have hope in the end.
CameronDev@programming.dev 6 months ago
I definitely dont want to leave the Signal client, but being able to connect with others on other networks would be great.
And it would maybe reduce the friction for moving people off messenger/whatsapp? (Also works in the other direction as well)
If anything, Messenger + Whatsapp merging is basically cementing Meta’s dominance over chat. They are already dominant in a lot of regions by themselves.
I guess we will have to see how it all shakes out :/