Does anyone know where this is at? I thought WhatsApp were being forced by the EU in 2024 to introduce this under the Digital Markets App? I’m googling, but am finding very little info.
It would be great if we could use Signal to communicate with WhatsApp groups. The sooner I can delete WhatsApp the better.
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Federating would mean handing off chat metadata to Meta and other for-profit companies in the future.
I don’t see how anyone excited to use Signal would like that. It very much defeats the purpose of using Signal.
I’d rather my Signal not be federated sigh Facebook at all. I’d be fine downloading a secondary Signal-owned app just for Whatsapp contacts (that way I don’t have WhatsApp on my phone), but I do not want my standard Signal traffic routed through Facebook’s data-guzzling, privacy-eroding servers.
I also am waiting for news on this. I think many users lack of an european view. In Europe Whatsapp is a monopoly for Instant Messaging, look at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1005178/share-population-using-whatsapp-europe/. And you do not break a Monopoly with “remove whatsapp and use only signal”. I only have 1 contact in Signal, two years ago I had 5 contacts. If I remove Whatsapp, I lack of IM. Period.
Signal has E2EE encryption, Signal collects very few metadata. If they collect very few metadata, they have very few metadata to expose to Whatsapp. If Whatsapp forces them to provide more metadata, they could argue and even ask for arbitration with the European Comission.
But the lack of interest to ever consider the interoperalibity seems to me they are not interested in the european market. They do not want to grow in Europe to become the best privacy-respectful IM solution (with users).
Signal declined, despite the EU bending over backwards and handing them the chance on a silver platter to become relevant.
IMO it’s a mistake, like getting rid of SMS support was (which is far less secure than WhatsApp yet Reddit/Lemmy seem to be angry about that but glad about lack of WhatsApp interoperability?? I guess it’s because Americans don’t really use WhatsApp so it’s not a big deal to them, whereas SMS is).
It would have been an amazing opportunity to help those that want to use Signal actually use it.
Yes, I’m aware Meta scrapes what metadata they can from messages, but if you make this clear in Signal when you talk to a WhatsApp user then I don’t see the issue, after all it’s what they did for SMS chats yet everybody loved that feature!
People trying Signal because it’s compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that’s a good thing.
The Signal foundation seems to care more about being ideologically pure for its 10 users than they do about making a small compromise that leads to far more users and far more Signal-to-Signal chats. It seriously disappointed me, and I stopped my £10 monthly donation hearing that bad news. I was so invested in Signal because I thought it was a great app, but there’s no point of financially supporting the growth of an organisation that vehemently rejects growth, I was throwing my money away.
I went from having 10 contacts on Signal down to just one after the SMS purge. I want to use this app but it’s pointless. Nobody wants to use an app that nobody uses, and Signal doesn’t seem to want any users either.
Frankly, I don’t buy their excuse. If they were truly that ideologically pure about absolute privacy, they’d never have added SMS support in the first place! And they wouldn’t have tied accounts to phone numbers either!
I think the reason they ditched SMS was down to development costs. Maintaining that functionality, as well as building RCS support, is far more expensive than simply cutting the feature out and trying to salvage some “it’s about privacy!” PR. I think the same is true for WhatsApp integration.
E: I knew this would start getting heavily downvoted once the Americans started logging on. Please try to understand that WhatsApp is big in much of the world. Everybody uses it. My bank wouldn’t let me take out a mortgage without WhatsApp. That’s how ingrained it is. Being able to use Signal and still receive messages from people would go a long way in getting people to install the app.
Yeah I also found that decision to be really disappointing. Before you could just use Signal for all your messaging and it would smartly use its own protocol if you both had accounts. Now it’s relegated to dedicated Signal users, which yeah I’ve got like 4 contacts left.
I doubt it would lead to more signal-to-signal chats. With interoperability, they would be handing off their data to Meta, at which point users will just keep using WhatsApp as most are today.
If getting away from Meta and other for-profit companies is no more, what will be the selling point of Signal?
How could it not lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats?
The biggest problem with signal is that nobody uses Signal. Everybody uses WhatsApp.
If you make it so people can switch to signal without it completely cutting you off from the world, then more people will use it, which will lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, which will lead to signal becoming widespread enough that people shift from WhatsApp.
People that do use signal value privacy or just want to get away from predatory companies
Once interoperability breaks this, what’s going to be the reason for people to use it?
There’s a good chance Signal will have even less users than it does today if that happens, because the few users who care will leave.
Everybody uses WhatsApp.
and there needs to be a reason for people to switch; what’s that then?
There will be more privacy, because there will be more Signal-to-Signal chats.
Also, SMS support is vastly less secure, yet Signal users loved that, and there was backlash/mass exodus when they dropped support.
and there needs to be a reason for people to switch; what’s that then?
As I already stated: privacy. People want privacy, but they also want people to talk to.
If Signal can only speak to Signal, nobody will get Signal because then you can’t talk to anybody. And there’s no point of a chat app where you can’t talk to anybody.
Add interoperability and suddenly people are more willing to try Signal because you won’t be a social outcast with nobody to talk to anymore. Suddenly you have a few contacts that are on signal and find the app convenient to use. Then the users grow from there. Meaning more Signal-to-Signal chats.
I’ve started that 3 or 4 times now.
I also don’t appreciate how you appear to be acting like speaking with WhatsApp users is mandatory. It’d be an optional feature just like the (vastly less secure/private) SMS was. Even for those people, this change would be a major win, because they’d have more people to talk to as more people join the app.
I have no idea, but I’m also interested. Thus said, remember that’s only inside EU. I remember that Meta said they won’t apply this outside EU.
Hopefully never. Just stop using whatsapp. Be the change.
When facebook bought whatsapp, I walked through the list of chats I had on whatsapp and asked them what other apps they already used. Most people already used something other than a facebook owned thing or were willing to start.
WhatsApp is ubiquitous in Ireland, if only it was as easy to get away from it. Everything from clubs, schools, kids sport is done via group chats on WhatsApp. Absolutely hate Meta as a company, WhatsApp is the only app I use of theirs and only because they bought it from under us. If we could get proper interoperability, we could use a non WhatsApp app, but it’s not looking good so far.
Sounds awful, sorry to hear that
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Signal had SMS support and dropped it. I imagine any argument for Whatsapp interoperability would face a similar fate.
