Disconnected by Design: How Messaging Apps & Social Media Are Holding You Hostage
And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
Imagine you signed up for a new cell phone plan — let’s call the hypothetical provider SuperPhone. You put in your new SIM card, try to send an SMS, and it comes back with a message saying: “This user was not found on our network.” You read the fine print and realize you can only call or text people who also use SuperPhone SIM cards. You would quit the plan and go with another provider immediately, right?
What about if your new email provider, SuperMail, only allowed you to send emails to people with SuperMail accounts? Would you keep using it?
So why are you still using WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, and so on?
The reason is that these products were created after corporations realized they could train people not to expect interoperability. Email and telephone networks came before this shift. Interoperability means that different servers and platforms can communicate with each other over a shared protocol so that messages and information can pass between them.
For many people, the idea that WhatsApp could send messages to Telegram sounds like a cool idea, but also something complex or difficult to implement. But that’s not true. Implementing chat messages using a common protocol is usually easier and less complex than creating a private protocol from scratch. Interoperability used to be the norm and the default across nearly all platforms.
The reason companies stopped doing it is simple: they wanted to create monopolies.
If you can send messages to all your contacts regardless of whether they use WhatsApp or Telegram, and regardless of which company you register your account with, then you can quit their platform whenever you want. You could switch to a competitor or an open-source option. You could even create your own hand-rolled chat application and still communicate with everyone. You would never lose touch with your friends and you would never have to care what platform they are on.
Social network corporations don’t want that. If interoperability existed, they would have to compete with each other by offering you better software. They would need more and better features, a better user experience, real innovation that improves your life. They would have to treat you more respectfully and protect your privacy. If they failed to be meaningfully better, competitors could overtake them and they could go out of business. With the non-interoperable model, all they have to do is make sure all your friends are on their network — then none of you can leave without losing contact with everyone else.
When Facebook first added instant messaging, Facebook Messenger actually used the XMPP protocol, which was designed as an open chat protocol by Google (back when they still had “don’t be evil” in their corporate code of conduct). This meant you could send messages to people on Facebook without having a Facebook account. You could use a Google account or even create a chat box on your own personal website to talk with Facebook and Google users. The engineers at Facebook were simply nerds trying to build a chat system with the best possible functionality for the least possible effort.
At some point, Facebook executives decided they didn’t want their carefully engineered behavior-modification bubbles being interfered with by people they couldn’t control, so they shut it down. There was no outcry because most Facebook users at the time weren’t even aware that their access to the rest of the chat world had just been cut off. Now we all just accept this as normal.
We need to stop accepting this. Otherwise we’re just their domesticated herd animals. We’ll submit to being milked when they need our data, and if we moo too loudly, we’ll be silenced.
Not everyone can realistically leave these platforms overnight, but we can raise awareness and demand legislation that forces platforms back into interoperability.
We must challenge the narrative that this is in any way impossible. It is technically and legally absolutely achievable if we decide we want it.
Tackling interoperability is essential for rebuilding a healthier information ecosystem and addressing the pressing issues we face online. The ability to switch to more ethical, responsible solutions could quickly resolve many of the biggest challenges with today’s digital platforms.
Of course, messages like this won’t spread well on social networks, which is why it’s crucial to have alternative channels — like this newsletter. In the coming months, we’ll dive deeper into this important topic, so stay tuned — and invite your friends to join the conversation!