New Delhi, Feb 3: The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up WhatsApp and its parent company Meta over concerns related to user data sharing, asserting that citizens’ right to privacy cannot be compromised in the name of technology or business practices.
“You can’t play with the right to privacy of citizens of this country in the name of data sharing,” the top court told the tech giant, according to news agency.
Questioning Meta’s reliance on user consent and opt-out mechanisms, the bench came down heavily on the argument, observing that asking where the question of opting out arises amounts to “a decent way of committing theft of private information.”
Expanding the scope of the matter, the Supreme Court impleaded the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) as a party to the proceedings and said it would pass interim orders on February 9.
The observations were made while hearing appeals filed by WhatsApp and Meta challenging a Competition Commission of India (CCI) order that imposed a penalty over WhatsApp’s “take it or leave it” privacy policy.
During the hearing, the bench remarked that privacy policies of major technology companies are “so cleverly crafted that citizens will not understand,” questioning the very premise of informed user consent and reiterating that such practices cannot be justified under the guise of data sharing or acceptance of terms.
The dispute stems from WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy update, which triggered regulatory scrutiny over the manner in which user data was being handled and shared within the Meta group.
In November last year, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) upheld the CCI’s penalty of ₹213.14 crore on WhatsApp and Meta for abusing their dominant market position through the policy change. A bench led by NCLAT Chairperson Justice Ashok Bhushan and technical member Arun Baroka agreed with the regulator’s finding that the update effectively forced users to allow data sharing across Meta platforms to continue using WhatsApp.
While the tribunal set aside the CCI’s direction barring WhatsApp from sharing user data with Meta and its group companies for advertising purposes for five years, it otherwise upheld the findings on abuse of dominance.
The tribunal noted that the “take-it-or-leave-it” nature of the policy imposed unfair and exploitative conditions on users, leaving them with no meaningful choice. The CCI had taken suo motu cognisance of the policy, concluding that its “broad and vague” data-sharing provisions curtailed user choice and amounted to an abuse of WhatsApp’s dominant position. (Agencies)
