An instant messaging revolution? In the EU, proposed to introduce a law on a unified messaging standard

* In the photo, Katharina Barley, Minister of Justice of Germany

During an interview with the German online publication zeit.de, the Minister of Justice of Germany, Katharina Barley (Katarina Barley) proposed to introduce a unified messaging standard between different messengers:

“It should be ensured that WhatsApp users can also communicate with users of another messenger. This will allow people to switch to other instant messengers who have the best privacy standards and continue to talk to their previous contacts. ”

This regulation, according to Katharina Barley, should be enshrined in law at the level of the European Union. Also, the Minister of Justice of Germany expressed concern about the security of personal data on Facebook and other large companies:
Katharina Barley herself admitted that she did not use WhatsApp and Facebook:

“I'm too old fashioned. I send SMS »

Such regulation will deprive the market of communication monopoly of large players. Small companies, individuals who do not have enough money for advertising, will have access to closed user bases and the opportunity to compete with large companies. Users will have the opportunity not to install dozens of applications, but to use their only favorite instant messenger.

It should be noted that in Germany there is a development of the Conversations messenger . Conversations is the undisputed leader of the XMPP instant messengers.

The XMPP protocol was developed just for compatibility purposes, transferring messages between different, not fully compatible instant messengers. Any company or individual can add its own extension to XMPP, without the need to create a fork of the protocol. This has created many problems at an early stage of development, but at present XMPP is quite suitable for use .

Unlike other similar systems, XMPP has a high server fault tolerance, the above described scalability, low memory consumption and CPU resources, a high degree of decentralization. Most XMPP users do not use one server and one client. The development of the XMPP protocol is highly decentralized and does not depend on one company or a group of developers