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Comment by InsomniacL | Hacker News Reader

Nobody is talking about how ridiculous it is that none of these messaging apps talk to the other.

everyone i know uses whatsapp and nothing else, no real choice until the apps talk to each other.

This. Exactly.

Problem is that everyone knows the spyware issue, but if you leave WhatsApp, install every secure messenger that no one you know uses, you'll be a lonely guy.

Real security it turns out is just not communicating.

Why would WhatsApp ever have this functionality? It would do serious damage to the walled garden which they've so successfully built.

I would argue Facebook are abusing their market dominance by walling out other communication platforms prevent any real choice.

I would expect the competition and markets authority to act.

Those apps are becoming like phone numbers. Can, say Verizon, no allow you to message a friend on at&t?

Conversely, it wouldn’t really make sense for Signal to interoperate with apps that don’t offer the same level of privacy.

Even with E2E, if both platforms offered the same standarized encryption, would this allow for cross-platform messaging? Of course, some mechanism for exchanging of public keys would be needed as well.

I guess not since both platforms use centralized protocols.

With the Signal client being FOSS [1] and WhatsApp being proprietary, I also think that me using Signal to message someone on WhatsApp would still downgrade my privacy because I don’t know what the WhatsApp client is really doing with my message.

[1] In reality I don’t know that the Signal app on my phone is actually built from the publicly available code.

Why not build yourself from source?

I'm on iOS and I believe I'd have to pay Apple an annual fee for the privilege of building Signal myself and/or installing the compiled app. (Maybe I'd also have to buy a Mac or MacBook?) I also think I would have to reinstall my own build every few weeks and it wouldn't have access to my current chat history.

But I've never tried. I'd love to learn about any misconceptions.

I am using Android and building from source there is not complicated at all [1]. I was under wrong impression that using own build under iOS is not much harder :(

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/wiki/How-to-buil...

> because I don’t know what the WhatsApp client is really doing with my message.

You don't know that the person receiving your signal message hasn't jailbroken their phone and installed spyware unknowingly.

When you first message someone using a different platform, Signal could display a warning ~"This contact is using Whatsapp and Signal cannot confirm that communication will be secured, do you wish to continue?"

The Axolotl ratchet is the basis of both current Signal and WhatsApp. The standarized layer you are looking for is Matrix, which uses the same encryption approach.

Like Matrix, then.

Would an Error similar to Google Chrome's warning for non HTTPS sites not work?

~"This contact does not provide a secure means to communicate with them, click below to ignore this warning however your communication may be monitored."

Of course it makes no business sense but regulations are coming that might require that in the EU.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20211210IP...

How would, say, Signal "talk" to WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram/Telegram/… without compromising its security guarantees?

Use the same mechanism as web browsers for none-SSL websites. Give the users a warning and let them make an informed decision.

Signal could also place in their TOS or require a contract signed with third-party platforms for legally binding guarantee, received signal messages will not be analysed.

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