The Competition Commission of India might issue an order against social media platform WhatsApp over its privacy policy update. Additionally, WhatsApp might also be fined by the commission.
This is as per a report by Mint. The report indicates that WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta (formerly Facebook), violated competition law. The law was violated by abusing their dominant market position. This is with regard to a controversial privacy policy that allows WhatsApp to share certain user data with its parent company, Meta.
The director general of the case has shared the report of the ongoing investigation with the CCI. Following this, a draft order has also been finalised by the CCI. The CCI can charge up to 10 per cent of the global turnover for anti-competitive practices.
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WhatsApp's Privacy Policy Controversy
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for WhatsApp reportedly said that the 2021 privacy policy amendment had no effect on the confidentiality of users' private chats. The spokesperson told Mint, “WhatsApp gave users the choice of accepting the Privacy Policy Update, and users who chose not to accept the update continue to use WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family without having their accounts deleted or losing functionality.”
Interestingly, this is coming at a time when several other countries have been vocal against the privacy policy of WhatsApp. For example, in 2021, Germany halted Facebook’s data sharing with WhatsApp.
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In May 2021, a three-month ban was imposed on Facebook for collecting the data of users from WhatsApp as per an AFP report. Johannes Caspar, the head of the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, reportedly said, “This ruling is intended to protect the rights and freedoms of the many millions of users across Germany who give their permission to the new use and privacy policy.”
Meanwhile, WhatsApp said that this ruling is based on a misunderstanding of the purpose and effect of WhatsApp's update. Another country that imposed a fine on WhatsApp was Ireland. The Irish data protection regulator reportedly imposed a fine of $266 million in September 2021. The fine was with regards to the privacy breach of WhatsApp. Meanwhile, the social media platform highlighted that the fine was "entirely disproportionate."
A spokesperson of the company reportedly said, “We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018, and the penalties are entirely disproportionate.” This comes at a time when the commission was also looking at allegations of anti-competitive practices against e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart. However, the Karnataka High Court halted the CCI investigation due to a procedural error.
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