As part of changing laws in Europe, Meta now offers the option for you to chat with others using third-party messaging apps that have integrated with WhatsApp and that you choose to turn on.
Note: Chats with third-party apps are only available in select regions and may not be available to you.
I feel sorry for all in the wrong region.
Cool but please just use Signal if you can. I’m priviledged enough to have got my best friend to use it with me so far.
This kind of interoperability is really useful for getting people to switch over. The only reason to use these apps is to talk to other people, so the network effect has a heavy hand on people’s decisions
I ditched WhatsApp some weeks ago and have most of my friend on Signal now, even my 70+ parents. I still have some people on Telegram though
What do you think of Telegram? I only really heard bad things but I’m trying to stay open-minded about it
https://lemmy.ml/post/43787973
Ugh… ignore the .ml part 🤢
Yeaaa I saw that, that’s exactly why I’m not very fond of telegram
I don’t get why Olvid isn’t more popular—it’s end-to-end encrypted and doesn’t even leak metadata
The only choice so far is Birdychat, which is business related. I’m afraid Signal would be hard to integrate due to its encrypted nature (and the fact that it’s not European). I hope Threema will follow.
Unfortuantely I only found this German heise news from Feb 2024. But both Signal and Threema won’t lower their security and privacy standards to be interoperable with WhatsApp.
I also have haiket allowed.
No FOSS options.
There is still lots of work needed on this regulation. You still need to install WhatsApp to be able to use other apps, and then encryption (however safe it is in the first place is not a topic of this post) is weakened or completely broken. Second as of now only very few fringe messaging apps support it.
Is there also a way to chat with people using WhatsApp without me installing an Meta app on my phone?
Xmpp and Matrix have bridges that only require to install WhatsApp on some old phone and turn it on once every few weeks to renew the connection.
This works independent of what is mentioned in the OP’s link.
Heh, I used to run Whatapp in an Android VM for use in a Matrix bridge. I got my phone number banned in about a week or so. So I guess it’s really important to use an actual phone.
That was years ago and I used that to get my family to install Element, so it still ended well.
I think it’s called Birdychat or something
I don’t imagine many people would opt in to this. Even if you bother to click on the notification for setting it up, the multi-step wizard warns you enough times about the risks of enabling this feature that most would just leave it disabled.
That’s where you and me come in. Tell people about it!
is there a list of 3rd party apps? being in the ‘wrong region’ and the linked page just says: “Chats with third-party apps are only available in select regions and may not be available to you.” Changing my VPN to an EU country gives me the DMA version which still doesn’t state which apps they have actually integrated with.
Which regions?Had to update WhatsApp firstHmmm i wonder 🤔 probably maybe the EU?
What’s the point, i can use other apps (signal for example) in whatsapp ? If so, why wouldn’t i just use the other messaging app
