The case for a messaging standard
How interoperability could save instant messaging (and your privacy too)
In February 2014, Facebook bought Whatsapp in a record-shattering deal for about $19.3bn. Promising it would not be able to share data between the two services, Facebook convinced European competition authorities to approve the acquisition. Now, two years later, Facebook reigns supreme on the European mobile messaging market. This de facto monopoly is not without consequences. Since November 2015 links to messenger app Telegram are no longer clickable or copyable in Whatsapp’s Android client, an arguably anti-competitive move. More recently, in January 2016, Facebook informed EU officials that it would update its privacy policy, effectively allowing it to tap into the data stored by Whatsapp. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this move stirred up immediate backlash from European regulators, who, after all, had been promised the opposite. But more than that, the controversy laid bare a simple truth: In the absence of viable market alternatives, regulation watchdogs are effectively our last line of defence against Facebook’s potential abuse of its dominant market position.
But here’s the thing: Regulation is reactive by definition. Even if we trust the regulation authorities to do their job properly, the momentum lies with Facebook. Meanwhile, any individual concerned enough to take action and switch to another service would be hard pressed to find a real alternative. Telegram? iMessage? Viber? Sure, but only if you are willing to give up a majority of your social network connections. At the same time, European regulators cannot just rewind time and retract their permission for the Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp.
This is exactly where the idea of interoperability comes into play. Just like phone numbers connect customers of different telephony networks, so should mobile messaging services allow interconnection between users of different apps. The rationale for such a regulation is clear. Interoperability alleviates the constraining forces of the lock-in effect and allows users to choose their preferred service in terms of functionality. One user may for instance want a service that features higher privacy standards like Signal, while another might be looking for the Swiss Army Knife-like approach of the Chinese WeChat. Rekindling competition through interoperability would effectively return agency to the consumer. A Facebook under market pressure would likely not risk alienating its users by compromising their privacy.
In technical terms, this interoperability could take the form of a universal messaging protocol. The regulator even has the choice between a variety of open-source standards. Whatsapp, for example, is based on a customised version of the open Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Facebook messenger uses MQTT, but it has in the past also allowed third-party access to its app via XMPP. These and other standards each have various advantages and drawbacks, but as the Facebook example shows, the services themselves do not even need to rely on the same protocol to allow for communication. To negotiate these technicalities, the process would likely have to be supervised and moderated by a regulatory body. Depending on the scope of the proposal, this organisation could be the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) or the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), both of which have ample experience with standardisation processes.
Even though this technical process may lead to some short-term grievances among companies having to adjust their apps to fit the new standard, it should yield plenty of benefits in the long run. For consumers, on the one hand, interoperability entails the possibility to use a single app for all communication, and thus brings about a new simplicity, without the the inconvenience caused by communications via different services (in the European case most likely Whatsapp and Facebook). Likewise, revived competition will mean more choice and new features for consumers, as new contenders may rise to challenge the established services with innovative concepts and applications. For firms, on the other hand, the regulation may also bring new opportunities. In fact, almost any company engaged in instant messaging services beyond Facebook/Whatsapp stands to gain in market share. Furthermore, should interoperability lead to users preferring to use a single app for reasons of simplicity, firms could profit from this unification of communications by adapting their business model to it. In a practical example, a WeChat-like app may present their clients with customised offers for restaurants.
It also is important to note that interoperability does not mean an equalisation of messaging services, but would only affect the very core of their business: the transmission of text messages (and potentially files, depending on practical implementation). This means, for instance, that Snapchat could continue to offer its unique image sharing service, and Facebook messenger could still build on its social network integration. The only difference would be the possibility to send a text message from Facebook messenger to Snapchat.
Despite the potential benefits from a universal messaging standard, some valid questions remain. Will it be possible for companies to turn a profit in a more competitive environment? Whatsapp, notably, has never been profitable despite its dominant position. Is a technical standard able to keep up with the pace of innovation? Will it be adaptable enough not to become a bottleneck? And lastly, how do we prevent the emailification of instant messages? A unified ID system could, after all, be a gold mine for spam bots.
Many of these questions, however, have relatively straightforward answers. Companies have been churning out new messenger apps for a long time despite their notorious unprofitability. A messaging standard can be adapted and renewed as is done in many other fields. And regarding the emailification problem, well, there are always spam filters. Ultimately, the advantages of enabling interoperability between messenger apps through interoperability far outweigh its drawbacks. Now we just need the political will to actually make it happen.
Written with Jean-Baptiste Manenti
