There are always exceptions, but for the vast majority of people in our country, WhatsApp is the app they use to communicate with family, friends, and coworkers. This makes it one of the most used and important platforms in their daily lives, you just have to see what happens when the service goes down and stops working for a few hours.
This reflects how being without WhatsApp affects us, and it’s something that no one wants to experience, but due to the entry into force of the Digital Markets Act imposed by the European Union many users could be left without access to this messaging app.
This is because this new regulation imposed by the EU forces tech companies to change their policies, which directly impacts the user. In the case of WhatsApp, the biggest change that will occur is the arrival of platform interoperability, which means that the service owned by Meta has to update and change some aspects. And as is usually the case with these types of changes, users have to accept them if they want to continue enjoying the app, therefore, starting this Thursday, April 11, 2024, all WhatsApp users have to accept, if they haven’t already, the new changes and requirements of the app if they want to continue using it normally.
The truth is that these requirements do not represent a big change for you, and you probably won’t find reasons to reject them, but in case you do, keep in mind that you will have to stop using WhatsApp. These requirements are as follows:
- Accept the new Conditions – more information on guidelines and policies.
- Details on the new EU requirements and interoperability between apps.
- Changes in data transfer policy, based on the EU-US Privacy Shield.
- Changes in the minimum age policy for using the app, which goes from 16 to 13 years old.
You may have even accepted these changes without realizing it, as a small message pops up when you open the app and you may have accepted it without even reading what it said.
What does interoperability mean in WhatsApp and how does it affect me
As we were saying, starting from this April 11, the biggest change in the history of the app will begin to take place. This is because with the aim of ending the monopoly of the top five tech companies in the market and offering more freedom of choice to users, the EU has forced these ‘Big Tech’ companies to open their platforms for the benefit of smaller apps. In the case of WhatsApp, this means that soon users will be able to receive messages in their WhatsApp account that have been sent by someone from another messaging app like Telegram or Signal, and vice versa. This way, users who, for whatever reason, do not want to use WhatsApp can choose their favorite app and not be excluded from the conversations that until now always and only happened on the Meta platform. Although this will only happen if the user, the account owner, agrees to receive messages from other platforms.
