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Spec work to improve notifications in Matrix, client-side bridging to prove that interoperability is a choice and even a demo of it in Matrix Live… that, and much more happened this week in Matrix!

matrix.org/blog/2023/03/03/thi

@matrix the notification encryption was amazing to read! @eyaddo

@matrix Push notification seems interesting and client-side bridging too, although I'd probably use it on a dedicated android device to avoid running whatsapp etc on my phone.

Will element one offer facebook messenger bridging? I'd sign up if it did, I don't really care for bridging telegram & signal, at least they're both opensource apps.

@matrix I'm not sure I get it.

When you bridge WhatsApp to Google though Matrix: do we agree that the message is decrypted once received by matrix and re-encrypted to be sent to Google (and the same decryption/re-encryption happen in the other way)?

@lutindiscret yes, we agree. the key thing about client-side bridging for DMA is that **the re-encryption happens on your client, which can see the plaintext messages anyway**. so it doesn’t break E2EE.

@matrix I don't get it. How does this work? What piece of software is deployed on the device so the "re-encryption happen on the client".

Alice has a device with whatsapp. Bob has a device with Google Message. How can those two devices can communicate with E2EE, there has to be some code on the devices to do that. Do they have to install a plugin or something? Whatsapp cannot guess how to encrypt something in to be decrypted by Google Message: where is the trick?

@lutindiscret @matrix The bridge is installed on the client : for bob, the bridge works like a whatsapp (see edit) client which store the message in google message.

Edit: For bob, his bridge works like a MATRIX client and a google message client. For Alice her bridge works like a matrix client and a whatsapp client

@zgou who install the bridge on Bob's device? Is this Bob which install it on its own or is it supposed to be installed/pushed by Meta to all WhatsApp clients?

@matrix

@lutindiscret @matrix It is supposed to be bob installing it. I'll watch the presentation to confirm :)

@lutindiscret @matrix OK so :

Alice sends a message on whatsapp and the client-side whatsapp<->matrix bridge replicates it on matrix

Bob receives the message on his client-side matrix<->google msg bridge and it replicates that message on google msg

@lutindiscret @zgou the bridge can be written by anyone, and bob installs it himself. think of it as a little background app on your phone copying msgs back and forth between the whatsapp servers and your matrix server.

@matrix @zgou thanks. I hope we will get some documentation about these new client-side bridges.

I'm quite happy, those are 100% better solutions than server-side bridging.

There will be some friction for the end-user I guess but let's see where this goes.

Good job 👍

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