It is a service, because the bridge is a software that need to be keep operational 24/24h and sometimes this is not so trivial (if I don't get wrong WA need an Android emulator running).
Pidgin doesn't use a "bridge"... it is just a generic local client that supports plugins for various protocols that are implemented via adversarial interoperability.
And because of that Pidgin is horribly unreliable. Don’t get me wrong, I used it for years, but over time all the plug-ins broke for one reason or another.
Law makers are required here to solve the situation, as platforms themselves refuse to work with each other. If Facebook and Google had to operate a common protocol (just like IMAP), Pidgin would work much better or wouldn't even be needed.
But no, they want to prevent people from talking with each other via other platforms because "we're best" or whatever.
It's probably because they don't want to lose users.
If you have FB, and I have Twitter, and we can chat, why would I ever make a FB profile or you a Twitter profile?
The mutual exclusivity is the competitive advantage. All these companies are competing with one another for your eyes. It wouldn't make sense for them to give that up for no return value.
Exactly! Providing a walled garden just for the sake of keeping users should not be legal, just like abusing any other market position wouldn't be legal.
I get that they want their "network effect" and keep it to themselves, but this is no good for users and the industry doesn't "regulate itself" as we've heard so many times, so time for law makers to step up finally.
My point is that the walled garden is the competitive advantage.
A law like this could regulate businesses out of existence.
Which websites fall under it? Only social? What about forums, etc. What if the companies just rebase to non-US jurisdictions? Even if you make this law, it's unlikely it would actually compel anyone to comply.
WA works with a pure go-based bridge. No Android required.
The rest of your comment is true though. Keeping these bridges up 24/7 is quite a bit of work. Most people (even technical ones) probably won’t bother with that.
You need WhatsApp to be installed on a real device or a VM for mautrix-whatapp [1] (the bridge) to work. You also need to connect to that real device using WhatsApp web [2].
With enough motivation, competitors can reverse their efforts. Reversing (competitors' job) is finding just only one flaw in a system. Hardening (WhatsApp's job) is thinking about all the possible ways it could be flawed. It can be an endless cat and mouse game though I guess.