The Indian court paused on Thursday, pause regulations that banned share user data with the parent company META, and brought Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Media Empire in the largest number of users.
Five -year prohibitions by India’s antitrust regulatory authorities, which had accused WHATSAPP as the Indian antitrust regulatory authorities abused market control over the 2021 privacy policy, according to the ruling of the National Company’s Law Court. Measures have been temporarily released.
India is the biggest market for meta and watts -up. According to Sensor Tower data, more than 700 million people use WhatsApp in Japan.
This controversy began with whatsApp demanded users to accept the extended data sharing with the meta platform. Otherwise, there is a risk of losing access to messaging services. European users can opt out such shares, but cannot be Indian users. The regulatory authorities determined that there was a problem with this difference.
In November, the Indian Competition Committee determined that WhatsApp’s “even left alone” privacy update would be an abuse of the superior status of meta by forcing users to collect more wider data without opt -out options. 。
At that time, the surveillance agency discovered that Meta was dominant in the two major markets in India, the “over the top” messaging app and online display ads via smartphones.
On Thursday, the court has maintained the ban, and ordered Meta to pay about $ 12.35 million in half of the higher fines within two weeks. The next hearing will be held on March 17.
Court Ashoku Bousshan has expressed concern that five -year prohibitions could threaten the business model of Watts -up, which provides free messaging services.
Meta’s lawyers argued that the Indian next digital privacy law, which will be enforced later this year, should manage these issues, not competitive rules.
“We welcome NCLAT’s decision to allow partial holds of the Indian Competition Committee (CCI). We evaluate the next step, but depends on our platform for growth and innovation. Meta’s spokeswoman said, supporting millions of companies and focusing on finding a way to provide high -quality experiences that are expected to WhatsApp, “said Meta’s spokeswoman. statement.