This week the Digital Markets Act (DMA) has come into force throughout the European Union, a legislation that aims to regulate digital platforms that have significant market power, known as “guardians” or “gatekeepers”, and ensure fair competition and open innovation.
With the DMA now in force, Meta, one of the “guardians” of the Internet, has published a blog post informing about how end-to-end encryption works in WhatsApp and Messenger while also complying with the requirements of the Digital Markets Act for third-party chats.
The DMA requires that Meta “be ready to enable interoperability with other services within three months from receipt of the request“, but according to the blog post, its implementation for public use could take longer.
The requirements also demand that only individual chats and the exchange of files such as images, videos or voice messages be allowed “in the first year” of the new regulation, before they are expanded over time to include group chats and calls.
Meta says that third-party providers will have to sign an agreement to interoperate with Messenger and WhatsApp before the company works with them to implement it. The company asks that other providers use the Signal protocol from WhatsApp for encryption, but says it will accept others if it deems they meet the same security standards.
The company promises that end-to-end encrypted chats will be secure in transit, whether or not the other provider uses Signal. However, Meta does not guarantee that the apps receiving chats from WhatsApp and Messenger users can carry out malicious actions.
