skullgiver , 1 month ago

Discord uses unencrypted WebRTC, yes. I don’t know what WhatsApp uses, but the connection is encrypted.

WASM can’t talk to hardware encoders present on your CPU/GPU so performance will be severely impacted. It’s also plain slower than native code (2½-6 times depending on the kind of code).

Using websockets, or TCP in general, is terrible for live audio and video. Normal (video) calling protocols are designed so you can lose several packets and still continue talking with minimal disruption. Transmitting that through websockets will have minor traffic disruptions become major slowdowns. You also can’t do peer to peer in websockets like you can with WebRTC or native protocols.

Based on this blog post, WhatsApp seems to use SRTP to wrap RTP, combined with XMPP and Noise for metadata exchange. I suppose WhatsApp could wrap all that in WebRTC, but I don’t see the business advantage in revamping their entire protocol just so the dozens of “I hate Facebook” customers can call on their Linux machines. Especially as you need to run WhatsApp on an Android/Apple phone/tablet to have an account anyway.