The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Monday imposed a fine of Rs 213.14 crore on Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Whatsapp. CCI has imposed this fine on Meta for adopting unfair business practices in relation to WhatsApp privacy update in 2021. Along with this, CCI has also directed Meta to stop anti-competitive behavior and desist from such activities.
abused his power
In its order, CCI said that Meta has misused its dominance. Apart from this, this fine is also related to how WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy was implemented, how user data was collected and how it was shared with other companies of Meta.
Whatsapp cannot share data of Indian users
The Competition Commission of India has also said that WhatsApp cannot share Indian user data collected on its platform with other meta companies for advertising purposes for 5 years. This is a big blow for Whatsapp. We are saying this because there are more than 500 million monthly active users in the country on WhatsApp alone.
These allegations have been made against META
CCI found in its investigation that WhatsApp’s ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ policy update was not fair. That is, this policy forced all WhatsApp users to accept the data collection terms and share data within the meta group without any opt-out. CCI found in its investigation that this policy brought by Meta, which was in the form of an update, forces users to implement it and reduces their autonomy. According to CCI, Section 4(2)(A)(i) has been violated through Meta, WhatsApp.
Let us tell you, CCI had started investigating the revised privacy policy of WhatsApp in March 2021, which expanded the scope of data collection and also made data sharing easier with Meta and its other products. Whereas, till 2016, users had the option to decide whether they wanted to share their data with any company or not.
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