The interoperability is lovely, looking forward to having just one app!
> And among the restrictions are stipulations that gatekeepers cannot:
> [...]
> require app developers to use certain services (such as payment systems or identity providers) in order to be listed in app stores.
This is a giant blow for Apple.
I am very curious to see how and if this will be implemented, and enforced!
Isn’t it… the opposite of a blow to Apple? If there interoperability, why would I ever use anything than my phone’s default messaging app? (Especially if E2E encryption is a requirement, which it looks like it is)
This is just regulatory capture cementing the OS owners above app developers.
It means that even if you still use the default iOS messaging app, your contacts can use other messaging apps, rather than being locked into iMessage and therefore the Apple ecosystem. It breaks down some of the barriers to competition for new mobile OSes and messaging apps. This is a good thing.
It is also really annoying for those of us who like the fact that canceling is easy, and that I can count on it being easy. At least make it so that the choice of merchant should be the user, not the app developer.
> “The first basic messaging features will be user-to-user messages, video and voice calls, as well as basic file transfer (photos, videos), and then over time, more features such as group chats will come,” noted Schwab. “Everything must be end-to-end encrypted.”
I’ll wait to see the details but modern messaging apps are super complex and have tons of features. The odds of a third party implementing them all (and correctly) is low. Instead it’ll be like how iMessage “interoperates” with SMS, where non-native users are shunned for breaking everything for the group.
Microsoft having to document SMB protocol & to an extend Active Directory protocols after losing the legal fight with Samba project[1] set forth a fairly hopeful future to me, a what might be.
SMB is basically a worst case of difficult to tame protocols. A sea of ancient crufty bizarre interlocking protocols, which Samba had already done good work reversing. But after enormous enormous bad blood, bad press, and a nearly billion dollar EU antitrust fine looming, Microsft went & did the not-immoral(court mandated thing & documented the protocol & stopped anti-competitive cutting out others. Now hypothetically others could come and participate too.
The idea that every app does messaging perfectly is indeed dubious. But the iMessage reducing outsiders to bit players, shunned, with shit experiences & not allowed to improve, is exactly the sort of monopolization anti-trust hellscape that seems like is getting turned back here.
Fear over imperfection to me is way way way way down the chain of concerns to the blatantly anti-competitive, ever-isolating, closed off intranets of proprietary, big player apps engaged in high stakes vicious anti-competitive practices, like Apple is so notoriously & vicuously known for.
It might not got smooth at first but progress will be possible & things will improve quickly from there. Market forces can reassert themselves, once interioeration begins. It's gonna be great. Dont let a fear of openness & love of the giant obstruct us for yet more decades, please. The future & possibility is too valuable to squander, too valuable to let us be divided & sundered like we have been by these vast duopolies & isolated fragmented partial un-inter-networks.
I don’t think apps will need to implement each others’ features. Rather, apps will need to expose external APIs so that others could implement their functionality if desired.
It’s hard for me to understand how this can be implemented at all as described by the regulator quotes in the article.
The regulators make some pretty strong promises that I just don’t think are possible - “E2E Multigroup messaging across platforms will come soon.” Unless E2E means “Device -> Telegram bridge server which decrypts -> facebook messenger bridge which reencrypts -> facebook messenger client app which decrypts” Then this regulator imagines all “large” messaging companies are either going to maintain separate crypto libraries for each messaging target on the ‘big company’ list, or that they are all going to use the same E2E encryption tech. Both of those ideas are fantasies; not possible in the slightest for a combination of technical and regulatory reasons.
If on the other hand, they are imagining that they’ll force large messaging companies to implement non-broken, open APIs for interaction with their messaging services, then I would love that, Apple especially. Actually, WeChat especially, then Apple. It would be a significant change in model for FB and Apple to allow devs in, and a massive change for WeChat.
wechat isn't used that much in europe, so they will simply ignore it and dont do any business in europe.
I can see other non european companies doing the same, and I'm not totally sure the outcome is in the best interest of the people.
But time will tell, let's wait before we jump to conclusions.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799567
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30800576
Deleted Comment
> And among the restrictions are stipulations that gatekeepers cannot: > [...] > require app developers to use certain services (such as payment systems or identity providers) in order to be listed in app stores.
This is a giant blow for Apple.
I am very curious to see how and if this will be implemented, and enforced!
This is just regulatory capture cementing the OS owners above app developers.
So Europe will happily continue using other messengers, but now in a more interoperable way, hopefully.
“if we can’t scare them with pedos and terrorists, enrage them with monopolist bashing; we’ll get to spy on everyone again either way!”
> “The first basic messaging features will be user-to-user messages, video and voice calls, as well as basic file transfer (photos, videos), and then over time, more features such as group chats will come,” noted Schwab. “Everything must be end-to-end encrypted.”
(emphasis mine)
SMB is basically a worst case of difficult to tame protocols. A sea of ancient crufty bizarre interlocking protocols, which Samba had already done good work reversing. But after enormous enormous bad blood, bad press, and a nearly billion dollar EU antitrust fine looming, Microsft went & did the not-immoral(court mandated thing & documented the protocol & stopped anti-competitive cutting out others. Now hypothetically others could come and participate too.
The idea that every app does messaging perfectly is indeed dubious. But the iMessage reducing outsiders to bit players, shunned, with shit experiences & not allowed to improve, is exactly the sort of monopolization anti-trust hellscape that seems like is getting turned back here.
Fear over imperfection to me is way way way way down the chain of concerns to the blatantly anti-competitive, ever-isolating, closed off intranets of proprietary, big player apps engaged in high stakes vicious anti-competitive practices, like Apple is so notoriously & vicuously known for.
It might not got smooth at first but progress will be possible & things will improve quickly from there. Market forces can reassert themselves, once interioeration begins. It's gonna be great. Dont let a fear of openness & love of the giant obstruct us for yet more decades, please. The future & possibility is too valuable to squander, too valuable to let us be divided & sundered like we have been by these vast duopolies & isolated fragmented partial un-inter-networks.
[1] https://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110525-01.en.html
https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996
The regulators make some pretty strong promises that I just don’t think are possible - “E2E Multigroup messaging across platforms will come soon.” Unless E2E means “Device -> Telegram bridge server which decrypts -> facebook messenger bridge which reencrypts -> facebook messenger client app which decrypts” Then this regulator imagines all “large” messaging companies are either going to maintain separate crypto libraries for each messaging target on the ‘big company’ list, or that they are all going to use the same E2E encryption tech. Both of those ideas are fantasies; not possible in the slightest for a combination of technical and regulatory reasons.
If on the other hand, they are imagining that they’ll force large messaging companies to implement non-broken, open APIs for interaction with their messaging services, then I would love that, Apple especially. Actually, WeChat especially, then Apple. It would be a significant change in model for FB and Apple to allow devs in, and a massive change for WeChat.
I can see other non european companies doing the same, and I'm not totally sure the outcome is in the best interest of the people. But time will tell, let's wait before we jump to conclusions.
Dead Comment