3 min readNew DelhiAug 26, 2022 01:49 AM IST
First published on: Aug 25, 2022 at 10:51 AM IST
The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed the appeals filed by Meta and WhatsApp against Competition Commission of India (CCI)’s order for a probe into WhatsApp’s privacy policy update of 2021.
The division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said the appeals are “devoid of merits and substance”, and are thus dismissed.
A copy of the judgment was not immediately available.
The court refused to continue any interim relief in favour of Meta and WhatsApp. “We have dismissed [the appeals]…. We can’t continue…” the court said while rejecting the oral request made by the counsel representing WhatsApp.
While ordering an investigation, CCI had last year come to a prima facie conclusion that WhatsApp’s conduct in “sharing of users’ personalised data with other Facebook companies, in a manner that is neither fully transparent nor based on voluntary and specific user consent”, appears unfair to users.
On April 22, 2021, a single bench of the High Court had dismissed the petitions filed by WhatsApp and Facebook, which argue that the issue related to privacy policy is already pending before the Supreme Court and High Court.
Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp, argued before the division bench of HC in July that CCI’s probe regarding the messaging app’s privacy policy is “no innocuous investigation”. It termed the competition regulator’s actions as intrusion in its business and said there is no material to prove it was abusing its market dominance. Meta also said the social media company was being subjected to the investigation only because it owns WhatsApp.
Stating that WhatsApp hasn’t stopped implementation of its 2021 privacy policy, the CCI, in reply, argued that its probe into the policy was purely through the prism of The Competition Act and it should be allowed to continue with that. Additional Solicitor General N Venkataraman, representing CCI, had submitted that the challenge pending before Supreme Court against the privacy policy would not affect its probe, as the writ petitions there have nothing to do with the question of abuse of dominance by the Meta-owned company.
He had also argued that by the time the apex court comes to a decision, WhatsApp would have already shared data, as there is no stay in the matter.
Venkataraman submitted that even now WhatsApp sends pop-up reminders regarding the privacy policy to users who haven’t accepted its updated terms and conditions. “It is not that they have stopped. What about people who have [already] opted in. We have voluntarily pressed the button sometime without realising,” the ASG argued on July 25.
On July 9 last year, WhatsApp had told the court that it will not limit functionality of its messaging app in case a user does not give consent to its latest privacy policy and will maintain the approach at least until the data protection Bill comes into effect.
The division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said the appeals are “devoid of merits and substance” and thus dismissed. (Representational image: Reuters) 
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