India Orders Meta To Curb WhatsApp Data Sharing

India's competition watchdog has ordered WhatsApp to stop sharing user data with other Meta units for advertising purposes for five years and also levied a fine of $25.4 million for antitrust violations related to WhatsApp's controversial 2021 privacy policy. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which began the investigation in 2021, found that WhatsApp's "take-it-or-leave-it" privacy update constituted an abuse of Meta's dominant position by forcing users to accept expanded data collection without an opt-out option.

WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy update required users to share their data with Meta companies in order to continue using the messaging service, removing a previous opt-out option that had existed since 2016. The mandatory data-sharing requirement expanded the scope of data collection and processing by Meta's group companies.