Meta today is offering more details about how it plans to make its messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, interoperable with third-party messaging
Sounds like
facebookMeta isn’t seriously considering interoperation with the existing Signal network, which is a weight off my chest.I’d kinda prefer if they did interop with the signal network, because then i can get off messenger entirely. Messenger is already signal protocol, i dont see any problem there.
What are you concerned about?
I’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.
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.
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.
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 :/
Signal network is centralized, and they are too small of a player to need to open it up themselves.
Right, but with Signal being an open source project, it seems that anyone could (pending license-ability) build an app to interact with the main Signal network. It’s my understanding there’s a few apps on F-Droid that let you do that already.
Thus, Facebook should be able to (at least in theory) build compatibility for the Signal network into their existing messengers.
Is there any part of that I’m missing?
The actual DMA compliance needs to be between WhatsApp network and Messenger network. The method is up to them to figure out, and they have chosen Signal protocol. To work with the actual Signal network, those users would have to register on Signal and Meta porting all the data to Signal (with Signal agreement), which would essentially be them switching service instead of being interoperable.
3rd party Signal apps use the same network, so to use it you have to have an account on Signal network. Like I said, it’s a centralized server, so the Signal stores all the data of the users even if they use 3rd party clients. Same way WhatsApp and Messenger stores user data on their end.
I suppose the part I seem to be missing: what’s to stop Facebook from setting up a “Signal Server” that then hosts those users on Whatsapp/Messenger?
From there, what happens if Facebook then attempt to integrate those servers into the existing Signal network?
I’m really not sure how information is shared between servers on Signal and am curious if there’s not something at a purely technical level to stop that from happening. I’d imagine there’s some keys that need to be passed around for handling en/decryption which I think is what you’re alluding to, but I want to be clear that that’s what you mean.
The most obvious reason is licensing. signalapp/Signal-Server is licensed under AGPL-3 which requires any forks to share their code so that the upstream project can take advantage of all the derivative work if they choose to do so. Facebook prefers to keep everything in-house since they can more easily to hide analytic scripts, trackers, and other tracking technology they spend millions on.
Apart from that, there are technical issue that would need to be solved, since the two services uses different structures. That is possible, but it’s not as simple as running a script.
Facebook does use Signal protocol for their end-to-end encrypted messages which they promised to finally roll out enabled by default soon, but that just makes having full control over the server side tracking more important.
From there, what happens if Facebook then attempt to integrate those servers into the existing Signal network?
They can’t. Only Signal can do that as they fully control the centralized Signal server. And there aren’t a lot of benefits from a Signal point of view in allowing it. Facebook business and privacy invasive practices is everything Signal stands against, and they would have to eat the cost for all those users.
We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy. Source: https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
Messages is just a small part of a messaging platform at bigger scale. While a lot of technical issues can be solved, it doesn’t always make sense to do so.
This is a beautiful block of information and I super appreciate you for having drafted it.
