
WhatsApp sends Cease and Desists for apps that use native Android APIs - mimerme
https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-apps-native-android-api/
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devit
The real problem here is that after this stunt I'd like to completely stop
using Whatsapp and switch to something else instead, but I can't because other
people use Whatsapp and communicating with other people is essential to me.

The problem is there no laws to stop whoever becomes the lucky recipient of
such a network effect from doing whatever they want.

Instead antitrust law needs to be expanded to consider network effect
platforms like social network as monopolies on ways of interacting with their
users, and restrict them from several behaviors like this one.

~~~
Freak_NL
It sucks. Here in the Netherlands, WhatsApp is used by the _vast majority_ of
people. The holdouts (like me) consist of people who don't want to deal with
smartphones (some elderly, some who deliberately avoid them because of
addictive behaviour), or who own a smartphone, but don't agree with WhatsApp's
terms of use (essentially paying for access with your data).

Not using WhatsApp has consequences. We sometimes miss out on family events
when people forget that we don't use WhatsApp. Anyone with children is
basically required to use WhatsApp for communication with other parents,
organising school and social events, and what have you. Refusal to do so means
you ostracise your kids.

So yeah, great. To participate in some parts of society WhatsApp is now a de
facto requirement. A whole nation blindly agrees to whatever terms of use
Facebook drafts. And when you do accept those terms, you are forced to use
their client software on one of their approved operating systems. Owning a
(Android or Iphone) smartphone is a hard requirement.

The network effect means that alternatives never gain any traction, and the
price of WhatsApp ('free') is hard to beat.

~~~
furyg3
To be fair, my Signal list of contacts keeps growing here in NL. I do some
light proselytizing, but it seems to be moving along on it's own. Hopefully
Arjan Lubach (Holland's Jon Oliver) will do a hit-peice on WhatsApp like he
did on Facebook at some point in the future.

I'd like to delete WhatsApp, but any conversation I have in Signal vs WhatsApp
is a small victory that I'll take. If at some point more than 50% of my
messages are outside WA, I'll nuke it.

~~~
Freak_NL
Signal inherits some of WhatsApp's limitations though. It requires that the
primary device be an Android or IOS based smartphone with an internet
connection; and your identifier is your telephone number, which has the same
privacy implications as WhatsApp. With the centralised server model choosing
Signal over WhatsApp is basically betting that Open Whisper Systems won't
monetize your data, or won't be bought out by some bigger fish.

Why can't I use a messaging service from my desktop without having a
smartphone with pre-approved operating system nearby?

~~~
brewrwe
Signal-CLI and Signald both allow one to register a number on a desktop for
use with Signal, you can even pull your messages right into weechat if you
want: [https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-
weechat](https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat)

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einarfd
I wonder what Google thinks about this. If these companies only use standard
Android API's, and they get sued over that, that isn't good for Googles
platform at all. A reasonable response from Google would be to change their
terms for publishing to the Play store, if they don't say it already, that you
aren't allowed to sue other app makers, if they only use standard API to
interop with your app.

~~~
oddevan
This is key, I think. I recall Apple coming to developers' defense when they
were targeted for using standard APIs, and if Google wants Android to be a
useful platform it will need to do the same here.

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pmontra
> This letter is not a complete list of all of WhatsApp's rights you might
> have violated.

Fortunately they added this statement because (IANAL) I believe those
developers didn't perform any of the activities listed in the bullet points of
the letter.

However all of third party WhatsApp automation is a gray area. Everybody knows
that WhatsApp doesn't welcome it (I really don't know why) and they have the
money to litigate, especially because no big business will ever build anything
on the top of WhatsApp without a previous explicit consent. For example a bot
API. I never understood why they didn't implement one. I hoped that after the
FB acquisition they would, an exact copy of the Messenger one, but they still
didn't. Now that all the founders left maybe things will change but I wonder
what's FB's plan. WhatsApp is bigger than Messenger in many countries and with
the EU stance against data sharing between the two companies I wouldn't be
surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to Messenger.

~~~
ashraymalhotra
> I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to move all WhatsApp users to
> Messenger. People use WhatsApp over messenger primarily because how "light"
> the app feels. It feels exactly like SMS for free, which was always the
> appeal of the app. Given the trend to make a Lite version of every Android
> app, Facebook should be prioritising WhatsApp, not planning to migrate it to
> Messenger.

PS - Has a mass migration of community from one product to the other ever been
successfully pulled off?

~~~
dogma1138
WA doesn’t require a Facebook account if FB does that they’ll end up losing
quite a bit of users.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Nor does Messenger.

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tabs_masterrace
Remember when Instant Messaging protocols used to be open? When there was a
multitude of clients for any given service to chose from?

Now IM has left its early adopter stage and became an integral part of
everybody's life, but in doing so we became stuck with 100% proprietary
WhatsApp. Not undeserved, it works very well with billions of users, and is
probably the most usable IM service ever made.

But it became so big and "essential", that it doesn't seem right that a large
part of human communication is bound exclusively through their apps.

I think in the long run there would be a real benefit to opening up their
protocol.

~~~
pjmlp
When was that? I always remember them being reversed engineered.

~~~
RandallBrown
I remember a short time after AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, etc.
had fallen out of favor and Google Chat used XMPP and I think even Facebook
used it.

~~~
pjmlp
I never had any significant use of Google Chat or Hangouts among my circle of
acquaintances.

Those that left ICQ and Yahoo moved into MSN messenger, followed by Skype.

And now there is an uniform distribution across Whatsapp, Skype and Viber.

However this is anecdote data.

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robin_reala
The legal claims seem spurious at best. The letter provides a list of
infringements and claims that each of them is violated. I’ve not used the
(claimed) offending apps, but from an overview understanding of how they work
it seems like precisely no items from the list would be true.

~~~
tallanvor
Hopefully the app creators that received those notices are in a jurisdiction
with good anti-SLAPP laws. If they really are only using Android APIs and not
accessing WhatsApp through any other means, the claims are clearly designed to
intimidate them into removing their apps and settling rather than go through a
prolonged lawsuit that Facebook can easily afford, but small developers can't.

~~~
nmtlc
In the first world anti-SLAPP laws are not necessary because SLAPPs don't
exist to begin with.

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andrewaylett
Next up: suing Google because "Wear OS" and Android Auto also uses these APIs
to allow responses from the watch/car?

The whole _point_ of implementing these APIs is to allow the user to reply
using a different app; replies direct from the notification on the device
itself are a hook to encourage developers who don't care about the rich
integrations to allow that functionality anyway.

And that's one of the things I really like about Android: "platform" apps like
WearOS don't use private APIs, they use public APIs so other developers can
build on platform features. I have seven apps installed that ask for
notification access, five I've granted.

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Rjevski
The affected developers should “cease and desist” by stopping further
development and releasing the code as open-source.

WhatsApp/Facebook will then have to send C&Ds to hundreds of potentially
anonymous contributors if they want any chance of taking the open-sourced app
down.

~~~
lucb1e
Or just removing WhatsApp support and supporting some other platforms instead.
If they don't want people to find their platform convenient, no problem.

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fauigerzigerk
If I understand this correctly then I think Google needs to step in here and
defend users of the Android APIs. It can't be that developers are getting sued
for nothing more than using these APIs as intended.

~~~
rlpb
Google could add to their ToS of the Play Store that apps that try to enforce
control over the use of Android APIs get penalized or removed.

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antpls
At first, I thought WhatApps wanted to slow down automation and bots because
they just _don 't_ want people to be helped in their communications (which
would be weird, given their mission is to help people to communicate).

However, after the recent news about spreading misinformation in India which
did lead to injustices, I can see how bots may harm uninformed users more than
it would help them.

Shame on WhatApps for not being able to provide an official, controlled
automation solution.

~~~
icebraining
I don't see what any of these apps being targeted have to do with bots.

~~~
antpls
Ultimately, "Android" is about automation and integration (hence the name),
and WhatsApp is fighting the spirit of the Android API.

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guessmyname
> Can’t Talk‘s premise is simple. All it does is automatically reply to people
> when you aren’t around, making use of the quick reply (RemoteInput) API
> native to Android. […] It’s a paid application if you want to support more
> than SMS and calls, such as WhatsApp, Slack, and a lot more.

> DirectChat is another useful application. It works just like Facebook
> Messenger’s chat bubbles but it supports a lot of different applications
> too. It feeds your chats into another window where you can then reply back
> as well. Its most popular usage was probably with WhatsApp.

I think the _" Cease and Desist"_ letters are being sent because these two
specific apps, unless there are others not mentioned by these article, are
making use of APIs that are not directly part of WhatsApp but interact with it
in a _kind of_ direct way.

I wonder if the letters were sent directly to the developers or via Google
Play.

~~~
thecatspaw
You are right, they dont interact with whatsapp directly, but indirectly
through a android API. The android API cannot be covered by the whatsapp terms
(which the developers never agreed to according to the title)

~~~
bodas
I don't believe that. They never installed Whatsapp? The intersection of
people who build chat accessory apps and people who have never installed
Whatsapp is surely empty.

~~~
rpeden
I think it depends on where in the world the user is from.

Where I'm located, it doesn't seem like WhatsApp is used much, or at all. I
don't think I've ever met anyone in my personal or professional lives who uses
it.

So if I were building an app using these APIs, it probably wouldn't even occur
to me to test it with WhatsApp. I'd test it with Messenger, sure, and SMS.
Maybe even Hangouts, or whatever the newest Google chat app is.

I don't think it's farfetched to think that someone could have received one of
these notices even though they've never used WhatsApp.

------
kartan
TLDR: Two apps are integrated with Android. WhatsApp is integrated with
Android. Facebook wants the integration to stop, so they sue this other apps
integrated with Android.

The solution is easy. Facebook should remove the integration from WhatsApp.
Problem solved. If you don't want other apps to extend your functionality, you
should not integrate with other systems.

The reality is that when a behemoth like Facebook tells you to do something
and that they know were you live (probably literally), your company is at risk
independently of how crazy the claims are.

Corporations are the new big abusive government. But we can't vote them out.

~~~
r_c_a_d
But we can stop using their services.

~~~
Freak_NL
You and I can (and probably do), but the carrot it too sweet for the majority
of users.

~~~
mdpopescu
Now do that with the government.

~~~
kartan
> Now do that with the government.

It is a similar problem.

You can do that with education, healthcare, transportation, security... You
can have a private version of that.

Probably you can't have your own military, even that in the USA is not so
clear.

Most people just can't afford the private version. The government version of
that services is way cheaper, so you are stuck with it even if the government
does not want to invest to have a good service.

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anodari
In Brazil, everyone uses Whatsapp and companies have been pressured by
consumers to offer customer service through this channel. I researched and saw
that there are integrated apps, but I do not know what form they are using
since for all I know, the API has not yet been made available to everyone.

~~~
gsich
yowsup and Android emulators

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mnm1
Here's an idea. When a case like this is thrown out of court, the defendant is
awarded 1% of the company's revenues in perpetuity as damages. Or replace that
with any decent incentive for asshole companies like FB to pull this kind of
shit. There need to be serious negative consequences for abusing the court
system and loading it with bullshit cases like this one. There is no agreement
here between the two parties. Case dropped. The alternative is fixing our
fucked up court system so that it can be used for its intended purposes by
non-b/millionaires, but that's highly unlikely to ever happen.

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test6554
What if the problem of auto-messaging is the potential for an infinite loop of
message and auto-reply. That could cause a lot of headaches for whatsapp.

~~~
apearson
I would assume they have rate limiting for all clients if it affects them that
much

