The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed a fine of Rs 213.14 crore on Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta platform. This fine has been imposed due to Meta abusing its dominant market position through WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy. This decision was taken on how the policy was implemented and how the data of users was collected and shared with Meta companies. Apart from this, CCI has issued strict instructions to Meta and WhatsApp to improve their functioning within a stipulated time frame. CCI has ordered that WhatsApp cannot share users’ data with Meta companies for advertising for the next five years. After this period, users should be given the option to opt out of non-service related data sharing. Along with this, WhatsApp will have to clearly state what data has been shared with Meta companies, how it is used and what is its purpose. This decision is a big setback for WhatsApp, as it has more than 500 million users in India.
CCI has given this decision regarding WhatsApp’s 2021 terms of service and privacy policy. In this policy, users were required to accept the new terms of data sharing with Meta companies, otherwise they could not use the app. At that time, WhatsApp sent a notification within the app and asked users to accept these terms by February 8, 2021. This policy was different from the old policy of August 25, 2021, in which users were given the facility to opt out of data sharing with Facebook. CCI said that WhatsApp’s 2021 policy was like “take it or leave it”, which forced users to necessarily accept the terms of data sharing with Meta Group. The Commission has considered this to be an unfair condition. Last year, CCI had imposed a fine of Rs 1338 crore on Google in the Android case and asked the company to change its business model.
