- The new law on digital markets in the European Union was recently adopted
- WhatsApp must comply and offer the interoperability of its services to its users
- The Méta subsidiary has 6 months to comply
Once again, the European commissioners are making headlines. After imposing measures on Apple, forcing it to introduce the USB-C port on all its devices orby imposing sideloading on it, the European Union is now attacking WhatsApp.
Indeed, Thierry Breton and his teams recently adopted the new law on digital markets (DMA). This law involves a multitude of new rules to which digital players must comply. Some of these rules concern all companies on the European market operating on the internet, and others only concern the largest, called “gatekeepers”. The latter will have to make their services compatible with those of their competitors.
The EU is tracking down web giants
As a reminder, to be a gatekeeper the company must havemore than 45 million active users in the EU.
And WhatsApp far exceeds this figure given that the messaging application has nearly 40 million users, only on French territory. It is therefore one of the gatekeepers, just like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple and ByteDance (TikTok).
The Meta subsidiary would havealready started working on the interoperability of its serviceswith other messaging apps, like Signal, Telegram or Snapchat. On the other hand, gatekeepers have 6 months from September 6 to be in compliance with the DMA, and this also concerns Apple with sideloading.
Concretely, what is it about?
Service interoperability refers to the ability for various tools to communicate with each other. This should allow WhatsApp users tocommunicate more easily with people who use other messaging apps.
Consider the cases of a teenager and a grandfather who wish to communicate by means other than phone calls or text messages. If, for example, the teenager is only active on TikTok or Snapchat, while his grandfather is only active on WhatsApp, then they cannot communicate. However, with the DMA, they will be able to do it. So the grandson will be able to send a message from TikTok, which his grandfather will receive in his WhatsApp application.
Unlike other measures, this could prove to be quite useful for quite a few of us. Even so, most of the companies concerned do not agree. And for good reason, the fact of being able to communicate from one application to another should reduce the number of registrations for certain messaging applications. And therefore reduce the income of creators.
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By : Keleops AG
