WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy effectively forces its users into an agreement by giving them a false sense of choice and sharing their data with its parent company Facebook, Delhi High Court said.
The Delhi High Court dismissed the appeals made by Meta and WhatsApp against the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) order to investigate WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy, stating that the policy update effectively forced users of the messaging app to accept it by giving them the illusion of a choice.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) had commissioned an investigation into the 2021 revisions to the instant messaging platform's privacy policies. WhatsApp and Facebook had challenged the CCI's decision to order the investigation, but the High Court dismissed their appeals against the decision.
The single judge's April 22, 2021 judgement was well-reasoned, said the bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad, and the appeals are without merit and substance, necessitating the intervention of this court. Although the division bench delivered the decision on Thursday, it wasn't posted on the court's website until Friday. The high court observed that the market for OTT (over-the-top) messaging apps through cellphones in India is dominated by the instant messaging service WhatsApp.
A single high court judge had declined in April of last year to block the CCI's inquiry into the petitions filed by Facebook Inc. and WhatsApp LLC, the two platforms that are now known as Meta.
Based on news reports, the CCI independently decided to investigate WhatsApp's amended privacy policy in January of last year.
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