[skippyboxedhero]

I think the suspicion is based on this app being offered in a region whose government is hostile to privacy and this implementation being connected with the strong nativist bent in Europe.

The "spec" is not relevant in any way because we have no idea what else is going on. Why was it relevant that these operators must specifically be in the EU? Everyone is just complying with the global spec...but the app provider must be in Europe...okay.

[jeroenhd]

> Why was it relevant that these operators must specifically be in the EU

The integration is only possible because the EU forced Meta's hand. The law only applies to massive digital empires with gatekeeper levels of control.

I don't think the EU would mind at all if Meta would permit American companies to interoperate with them. Meta won't just permit it, they have to protect their WhatsApp Business money machine of course.

That's also why the feature is only available to EU numbers. Not because BirdyChat hates Australians, but because WhatsApp won't permit them to send messages to numbers from those countries.

[oblio]

> region whose government is hostile to privacy

Which government?

[skippyboxedhero]

EU. I don't think it is any better at the national level however.

[oblio]

The EU is not a government. It's a loose economic confederation. And national European governments vary wildly in their positions on this.

[skippyboxedhero]

It isn't an "economic confederation". It has a parliament, an executive, a judiciary, and a civil service. I would read the wiki page on the European Union.

[oblio]

The EU parliament can't propose laws, unlike any parliament in the world.

The executive is formed out of national government heads of state, which can veto everything.

Its judiciary and actually all 3 branches are strictly limited in their powers to powers delegated to them (which are weaker than the US Articles of Confederation).

The civil service is covered by the comments above.

In technical terms it is a government, in real life is is strictly limited, albeit growing. No country could operate with the "government" the EU has. France has several million government employees for about 70 million people while the EU has at most 50 000 workers for 450 million citizens).

This is a very complicated topic and I don't really apreciate the condescension inherent in sending me to Wikipedia.

[snowmobile]

Call it what you want but the fact remains that they can write a lot of laws the member countries must follow, for better or worse. GDPR, Chat Control, etc.