“You can’t play with the right to privacy of citizens of this country in the name of data sharing,” the court told the tech giant, according to PTI reports.
The top court questioned Meta’s claims regarding user consent and opt-out mechanisms, observing that the very premise of opting out appeared misleading. The bench remarked that asking users to accept such terms under the guise of choice amounts to “a decent way of committing theft of private information.”
Expanding the scope of the proceedings, the Supreme Court made the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) a party to the case and announced it would issue interim orders on February 9.
The hearing relates to appeals filed by WhatsApp and Meta challenging a Competition Commission of India (CCI) order that imposed a ₹213.14 crore penalty on the companies over WhatsApp’s “take-it-or-leave-it” privacy policy.
During the hearing, the bench criticized the privacy terms of major technology companies, calling them “so cleverly crafted that citizens will not understand” and questioned whether user consent was genuinely obtained. “Where is the question of opting out? This is a decent way of committing theft of private information,” the court emphasized.
Background of the Case
The dispute stems from WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy update, which allowed broader sharing of user data within the Meta ecosystem. This update drew regulatory scrutiny for potentially exploiting WhatsApp’s dominant market position.
In November last year, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) upheld the CCI’s penalty, agreeing that the policy effectively forced users to permit data sharing across Meta’s platforms to continue using WhatsApp.
While the tribunal set aside the CCI’s direction that barred WhatsApp from sharing user data with Meta for advertising purposes for five years, it upheld the findings that the “take-it-or-leave-it” nature of the policy imposed unfair and exploitative conditions, leaving users with no real choice.
The CCI had taken suo motu cognizance of the policy change, noting that the “broad and vague” data-sharing provisions curtailed user choice and constituted an abuse of WhatsApp’s market dominance.
