Meta’s Plans for E2EE Messaging Interop for WhatsApp and Messenger

Engineering at Meta:

To comply with a new EU law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which comes into force on March 7th, we’ve made major changes to WhatsApp and Messenger to enable interoperability with third-party messaging services. [...]

To interoperate, third-party providers will sign an agreement with Messenger and/or WhatsApp and we’ll work together to enable interoperability. Today we’ll publish the WhatsApp Reference Offer for third-party providers which will outline what will be required to interoperate with the service. The Reference Offer for Messenger will follow in due course. [...]

In order to maximize user security, we would prefer third-party providers to use the Signal Protocol. Since this has to work for everyone however, we will allow third-party providers to use a compatible protocol if they are able to demonstrate it offers the same security guarantees as Signal.

Unclear to me whether these third-party providers will, somehow, only function in the EU, or if Meta is opening this up worldwide. Also unclear to me is who benefits from this?

★ Wednesday, 6 March 2024