WhatsApp has announced plans to launch cross-messaging feature between other social media platforms. This will allow users of WhatsApp to send messages to people using Signal, Telegram, or and other platform.
This is coming after EU gave Meta a March deadline to open up its messaging platform.
Dick Brouwer, a WhatsApp engineering director in an interview revealed some details of how WhatsApp users may be able to chat with other encrypted messaging apps.
“In general, the system works as we expected – you’ll be able to chat with people using other messaging services, but there will be some hoops you and software developers need to jump through. The first is that you’ll have to opt in to cross-app messaging, as it won’t be switched on by default,” he explained.
The next bump in the road is that WhatsApp chats and third-party app chats won’t be able to mingle in one inbox, instead if you opt-in to cross-app messaging your third-party conversations will be put into a separate “third-party chats” inbox – meaning there are some extra taps required to open them.
Brouwer explained that the decision to keep the inboxes separate is because WhatsApp can’t guarantee these other services that “offer the same level of privacy and security” as its own WhatsApp platform. So by keeping them separate it’s creating an obvious barrier between the chats it can confirm hold up to its security standards and those it can’t.
Another issue is that for a third-party service to link up with Meta’s WhatsApp and Messenger apps, the company behind it might need to sign an agreement with Meta to follow certain terms. Details of such an agreement are yet to be unveiled.