Summary
Meta’s Instagram faced criticism after searches for “Democrat” or “Democrats” displayed a “results hidden” message, while “Republican” returned 3.3 million posts.
The issue emerged after Donald Trump’s inauguration, which Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg attended.
Meta attributed the problem to a technical error affecting political hashtags and promised a quick fix.
Critics, however, flagged concerns over perceived political bias, especially as Meta has recently shifted content moderation policies and aligned closer to the Republican administration, including donations to Trump and appointing a Republican as global affairs chief.
Isn’t that legally required in the EU?
Is Signal legally required to interface with WhatsApp by the EU?
I… don’t think so?
Why would it?
Neither Signal nor WhatsApp are specifically mandated by the EU to be interoperable as far as I know.
If you mean: Doesn’t GDPR require mobile/pc apps to not gather or store metadata?
Then also, no, not really?
https://www.gdpr-advisor.com/gdpr-compliance-for-mobile-apps-securing-user-data-in-the-age-of-mobile-technology/
Did you accept the WhatsApp Terms of Service?
Congrats, Meta(Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) will argue you consented to having your metadata harvested.
Do you see the cheekiness of why Facebook renamed itself to Meta?
Their core business model is trafficking, hoarding and selling ‘meta’ data, its right in the name.
Yes, the EU required apps to be interoperable. It was after GDPR. It became law in April 2024 iirc
Could you link me this law? Or do you know its name?
EDIT: Also, like … what are the boundaries of this law?
Does Steam Messaging now have to integrate directly with WhatsApp?
Does Instagram have to be able to send messages directly to Tiktok?
Its the Digital Markets Act and it went into law May 2023. AFAIK the only app that has implemented interoperability is Matrix. The rest are going to be fined at some point if they dont get their shit together
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
Doesn’t apply to Signal.
It applies to apps with large marketshare, maintained by for profit entities over 7.5 billion euro revenue in the EEA for 3 years or over 75 billion euro marketcap , and ironically it seems like the only apps actually currently doing anything to meaningfully comply with it are tiny, non profit maintained apps.
Yeah that is true https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-messenger-messaging-interoperability-eu/
All this says is that WhatsApp is required to be interoperable with Signal’s EE2E protocol.
It does not say that Signal has to has to be interoperable with WhatsApp, that Signal is required to make any changes to comply with the DMA.
The entire problem here is that Signal, in addition to using its own EE2E standard, also uses its own additional method called Sealed Sender to also encrypt and obfuscate the metadata of a message, which WhatsApp does not do and is not required to do.
Further, WhatsApp stores and logs metadata, Signal does not.
Were a Signal user to send a message to WhatsApp, well Signal would have to disable its Sealed Sender features to do this, and then WhatsApp would have the Signal user’s metadata, which they would then sell to databrokers and provide to governments upon subpoena.
If your metadata is not secure, you are not secure.
Yeah I meant WhatsApp, being a monopoly, has to integrate with other services, but it has nothing to do with Signal. Specifically WA is working with an integration with Matrix tho
Ok, so there is no law that mandates that WhatsApp and Signal must be mutually interoperable.
jagged_circle claimed there was a law that said ‘all apps must be interoperable’, i asked for a source, you, said ‘here it is!’, and then provided… not that.
Thanks for wasting my time and being wrong!
It was just a link showing you the EU has laws in this regard since you seemed unaware of that. Anyways have a good day