The EU is calling for WhatsApp, iMessage and Facebook Messenger to be opened up. The operators are to work together with competing providers in the future. This should please Telegram and Signal users in particular, who could also send their messages across platforms in the future.
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EU wants to force messengers like WhatsApp to cooperate more
The EU has agreed on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will have far-reaching consequences for large tech companies and users. One of the main goals of the DMA is to regulate market power more tightly. This also applies to the popular ones Messenger from Apple, WhatsApp and Meta (Facebook). These are to be obliged to cooperate more with one another in the future.
The EU has not yet clearly formulated what exactly the forced cooperation will look like in detail. However, it is already certain that the messenger apps should open. This should help ensure that small providers are not overwhelmed by the market power of the gatekeepers. Alternative messengers like Signal or Telegram are not mentioned by name, but should be meant.
Should there be real interoperability, as demanded by the EU, then WhatsApp & Co. will also have to in the future cross-platform news enable. A Telegram user could then simply send a message to a friend on WhatsApp. Due to the end-to-end encryption of the messengers, however, there are still important technical details in the way.
“Users of small or large platforms could then exchange messagessend files or make video calls via messaging apps and would have more choice,” says the EU’s DMA (source: European Parliament).
These are the most popular WhatsApp alternatives:
Billions in fines threaten
If the DMA is passed as planned, there will be massive penalties for disregard. Company can be fined by up to 10 percent of global annual sales get buzzed up. For repeated violations, the penalty increases to up to 20 percent. There is also the threat of a possible ban on takeovers in the event of systematic rule violations.