Meta Files Appeal in NCLAT to Challenge more than Rs 200 Crore Penalty on WhatsApp

The 213 crore penalty on the popular instant messaging platform WhatsApp has been challenged in the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). Whatsapp has been installed for updates made in the privacy policy in 2021. META, which is owned by WhatsApp, has challenged the Competition Commission of India (CCI) order on Monday.

NCLAT has been told that this order of CCI will have an impact on the entire industry and due to this the matter needs to be heard soon. NCLAT has decided to Sunavai on 16 January. In November last year, the CCI imposed a penalty of Rs 213.1 crore on META to misuse its dominated situation in implementing the privacy policy of WhatsApp. The CCI investigation found that in 2021 of WhatsApp, an inappropriate condition was imposed under the Competition Act in the update of the private policy. In this, all the users of WhatsApp were forced to increase the scope of data collection and to share this data with Meta Group.

This raised questions about the privacy of users and fairness in the market. In the CCI’s decision, it was described as an inappropriate condition, which is a violation of the Competition Act. The CCI also instructed the American company META and WhatsApp to take some measures to improve in a certain period of time. These instructions stated that no data will be shared for advertisements. For the purpose of advertisements on WhatsApp, META has been banned from sharing data of users with firms.

Along with this, WhatsApp will have to clearly explain which data is shared with the firms of Meta and each type of data will have to be linked with special objectives. The CCI also found this company guilty of obstructing competitions in the market of online display advertising. The company uses the data of WhatsApp users for this. Recently, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has removed the limit to connect UPI users on WhatsApp Pay.