Kill the Messenger

Automated translation from German. Original Article

Many people are deleting WhatsApp and moving to Telegram, Threema, and the like, where their data is better protected. Wonderful! But really, it's time to turn the entire world of messaging upside down.

💬 We have not, do not, and will never sell your personal data to anyone. Full stop. End of story.

Jan Koum, WhatsApp CEO (November 2009)

After three days, everyone has migrated — even the brother-in-law finally came round. The family chat is now on Signal.

Animated llamas have replaced the fried egg, there are new sticker packs. But the content hasn't changed: photos from winter walks, links to vaccine registration, memes, emojis.

WhatsApp deleted.

All's well that ends well.

So what happened?

Exodus

In January 2021, WhatsApp published new privacy guidelines. Via a pop-up notification, it informed users that the service could no longer be used without consenting to the new terms: the option to block data-sharing between WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook was being removed. (An option that, strictly speaking, had only ever been available to users who had signed up before 2016.)

Promptly — and with a certain irony, on WhatsApp and Facebook themselves — posts about the new terms of service went viral. Since then, the whole world has been talking about privacy and data protection. And people are once again being reminded why Facebook paid so much to acquire WhatsApp back in 2014: twenty-two billion dollars.

The logic is simple: it's about the data.

Not the literal content of the chats — no, the metadata: billions upon billions of data points about the relationships between users. These are valuable in the online advertising market, which is Facebook's core business.

Because however much people like to think of themselves as individuals, statistically speaking they tend to like what their friends like. And they buy what their friends buy. Yes, you too.

💬 You're not making anyone's life better by making advertising better.

Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder (February 2014)

That is why Facebook has always been keen to ensure that social interactions take place on its own platforms — not on those of its competitors: so the company can maximise its advertising revenue per user.

Because many people dislike this (or mistakenly believe that Facebook now has access to the content of all their encrypted WhatsApp messages), an exodus is underway.

And in the press, the great comparison begins. Which messenger is best?

• Threema has end-to-end encryption in its favour. But its source code is not fully open, and its user base still leaves something to be desired.
• Signal, too, lags behind on user numbers. But it scores on its encryption protocol and on its funding through a non-profit foundation.
• Telegram, by contrast, is popular. But both its source code and the app's financing are opaque.

Consumer magazine K-Tipp recommends Signal, Watson crowns Threema the clear winner, and the NZZ can't make up its mind. On WhatsApp itself, there is consensus: messages are secure, but personal user data is fair game.

💬Use Signal.

Elon Musk, entrepreneur (January 2021)

Signal gained nearly ten million new users in January alone; its servers collapsed for an entire day. Telegram has acquired twenty-five million additional users.

The mother-in-law now shares her joke-comic finds not via the green app but via the blue one with the dashed speech bubble. Videos and voice messages from the niece come via iMessage. The reading group remains on Telegram for now, the driving instructor on WhatsApp, the role-playing group communicates on Discord, and the work colleagues on Slack. A few friends are only reachable via Threema, others only by SMS. Variety!

All's well that ends well?

Not quite.

Cappuccino

Imagine having to install a separate app for every email provider in order to send messages to addresses at that provider.

A Hotmail app for messages to Hotmail addresses.

A Gmail app for messages to Gmail addresses.

A GMX app for messages to GMX addresses.

As absurd as that sounds, it is precisely the situation that has established itself in the world of messaging apps. The apps that a decade ago liberated us from SMS hell — that 160-character-limited former cash cow of the telecoms industry — have become their own kind of hell.

Telegram, Signal, Threema, and WhatsApp differ in terms of privacy, feature sets, and user experience. But they all have one thing in common: they are data silos, closed systems.

What that means: the respective providers control not merely a slice of the communication that passes through them, but all of it (though thanks to encryption, they often only see who interacted with whom and when, not what was said). Nothing stops them from blocking access or repurposing data.

Silos are also more vulnerable to censorship. Blocking a messaging platform like Telegram or WhatsApp may be technically simpler for governments than disrupting a system with many independent providers.

Email works differently.

Email providers do not form a closed system; they form an open one. Based on an open protocol that is nearly as old as the internet itself.

It was developed in 1971, by nerds for nerds. The developers — women not included, as was common then — wanted to send one another electronic messages about the progress of Arpanet (the precursor to the internet). Early adopters were government agencies and universities.

Alright — you almost certainly don't like email.

Because it always takes five attempts to migrate your old account onto a new phone. Because at times ninety percent of the messages in your inbox are spam — advertisements for erectile-dysfunction pills, viruses, trojans, newsletters you never subscribed to. Or, if you know your data protection: because emails are not typically end-to-end encrypted.

💬Email is amazing!

People are broken.

Paul Ford, entrepreneur (June 2015)

Yet whatever you make of it: the fact that fifty years after its invention we are still wrestling daily with "these bloody emails" points to something remarkable.

To where the future of instant messaging might lie.

The keyword is federation.

In a federated system, participants agree on common rules and standards. No single actor controls the system. The internet itself is a federated system: there are many millions of servers, all speaking the same language.

Email has achieved universal reach (and is similarly unkillable) precisely because it is not a platform — not a silo — but an open standard.

The difference? Imagine making a cappuccino.

Cappuccino is an open standard. The recipe is universally known: coffee and milk, frothed, with sugar and a dusting of cocoa to taste if you like. Anyone can make a cappuccino. You just need the right software (coffee and milk) and hardware (a coffee machine), plus a little time.

Email works similarly. The software to run an email server is freely available. Anyone can set up a server — all it takes is a machine with an internet connection.

No email provider can ever control all the communication that takes place over the email standard. There are hundreds of email providers and millions of email servers. The data any one provider holds is merely a fragment. Locking users out is impossible.

WhatsApp and its ilk are not cappuccino — they are Nespresso. The capsules only work with the matching machine. Messages only travel within the respective app.

Fair enough. Cappuccino instead of Nespresso.

But how?

Roulette

You have probably never heard of a federated instant-messaging standard. Understandably, because messengers built on open standards are still a niche.

But with every new controversy they grow. Element, for example — a messenger based on what is called the Matrix protocol — recorded a fivefold increase in downloads following the WhatsApp debacle.

The Matrix protocol is just one of several open messaging standards. It attracted wider attention in 2018, when the French government announced it would rely on it for internal communications going forward.

💬Democratic states must have access to content exchanged between terrorists via social media and instant messaging.

Emmanuel Macron, President of France (2017)

Guided by the strategic goal of digital sovereignty — and driven by unease over the increasing use of WhatsApp, Telegram, and similar apps for government business — France commissioned the development of Tchap: a messaging app built on the Matrix protocol.

Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, and the German Federal Armed Forces are currently looking to implement similar solutions.

For state actors, the Matrix protocol has one decisive advantage: it is like email — that is, cappuccino. Matrix servers can be self-hosted, which means data sovereignty is guaranteed — unlike with closed silos.

Federation is a principle with wide applications. Twitter announced in 2019, for example, that it would support the development of a decentralised protocol for microblogging. This gave rise to the Bluesky project.

André Staltz, one of the co-authors of Bluesky's first report, believes that open standards — which are usually developed as open-source projects — have greater staying power. They may start out lagging behind commercial software. But once they are just as good or better, they embed themselves permanently. Linux and Wikipedia are cases in point.

And yet the future of federated instant messengers is uncertain — not only because of user-friendliness. They can also be a thorn in the side of authorities, since they are harder to monitor. And federated systems are vulnerable to bad-faith participants who use them to spread spam, for instance; blocking such actors is easier in closed systems.

For an open protocol like Matrix to prevail in the long term, then, a few more controversies will be needed. But with every fresh round of messenger roulette, a protocol designed not for short-term trends but for the long haul becomes more attractive.

💬Even when online dating, I ask whoever I want to meet to download Signal first — otherwise they don't get my number.

Emily Overton, data-privacy expert (January 2021)

And so back to WhatsApp. Or rather, back to Telegram — the new WhatsApp. Because in the walking-group Telegram chat, the debate has started up all over again.

The question this time: "Threema or Signal?"

The first person argues for Threema — the data is stored in Switzerland and there's no big corporation behind it. Someone else counters that this is mere Swissness hype when it comes to data protection, since the "ancient Swiss data-protection law" of 1993 (VDSG) lags behind the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). (This person is, incidentally, behind the times: the new DSG has been revised, passed by parliament, and will come into force in 2022.) Someone points out that Signal is backed by a foundation. The conclusion: we'll probably have to use several apps after all.

So is it really worth switching from WhatsApp to another silo?

If you don't care about privacy and data protection: not necessarily.

If you do care what happens to your data, then the answer is clear: yes, you should switch. You thereby withdraw yourself, at least partially, from the surveillance-capitalist business model. Every step away from it is a step in the right direction. Use Signal or Threema. Bring others with you. But wherever you end up, don't get too comfortable.

And if you're feeling truly bold: install Element.

Welcome to the Matrix.

💬This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.

Take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

Take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland — and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Morpheus, in the film The Matrix (1999)