Is the Messenger Chaos Coming to an End?

Whether Signal, Telegram, Threema, iMessage or Snapchat: chatting is no longer centralized in one app, but spread across several services at the same time. Fortunately, this chaotic situation could soon resolve itself. WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging app in Switzerland. Despite past criticism of the service’s data protection practices following its purchase by Meta, a critical majority remain loyal to WhatsApp. The consequence: if you want to reach all your contacts, you can hardly avoid WhatsApp. This pull factor, coupled with data protection concerns, has led many of us to use several messengers.

Gatekeeping is a problem that doesn’t just affect messenger services. However, this problem is particularly striking when it comes to chat apps, as most of us use messengers to communicate with friends, relatives, our employer or service providers on a daily basis. The fact that we now not only have to use different streaming platforms for different series, but also different messengers for different friends is a situation that couldn’t be more tedious.

The EU has therefore decided to level the playing field of the digital market and has drafted various legal requirements to give users more freedom in their choice of service providers. Among other things, the Digital Markets Act requires the interoperability of messenger services and social media platforms with their smaller competitors.

The declared aim is to prevent gatekeeping and promote user freedom. Clearly the right direction for Digital Republic!

Meta’s messenger service, of all things, which has been repeatedly criticized, is now providing momentum for the implementation of interoperability.

In an interview with Wired, Engineering Director Dick Brouwer revealed that WhatsApp is ready to offer interoperability with other messengers. However, for third-party providers to be considered, they must offer end-to-end encryption and sign an agreement with Meta. What exactly this will look like is still unknown.

It is also not yet known whether the other major messengers will follow suit. What is clear, however, is that WhatsApp’s announcement triggers a process that puts the other messengers in a tight spot. If WhatsApp, currently the largest messenger service, opens its doors, the app is likely to become an attractive all-in-one solution for even more users.

Digital Republic has been preaching it for a long time: in a digital world, freedom is always better than restriction. Those who communicate freely and allow their users freedom have a clear competitive advantage. And rightly so!

What the EU wants to achieve with the Digital Markets Act is in line with our vision of a free digital world for everyone and everything in which we can move, communicate and work.