Meta-owned messaging application WhatsApp rolled out a privacy policy update in early 2021. What followed was a prolonged competition law dispute that moved from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to the Delhi High Court (HC) and then repeatedly to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT).
Over several years, regulators and courts kept returning to the same core question: whether a dominant messaging service can require users to accept expanded data sharing as the price of continued access?
Notably, how regulators and courts approached that question changed over time. As such, here’s a detailed timeline of how the case unfolded since 2021:
January 2021: WhatsApp updates its privacy policy
The company introduced a revised privacy policy that expanded the scope of data sharing with other Meta entities. Users received prompts asking them to accept the updated terms in order to continue using the messaging service.
Notably, the update offered no meaningful opt-out. Those who declined risked losing access to the app altogether. Regulators later treated this take-it-or-leave-it framework as central to the case, particularly because the service functioned as a widely used and hard-to-replace mode of communication.
March 2021: CCI orders a suo motu investigation
The CCI took suo motu cognisance of the policy update and instructed its Director General to investigate under Section 26(1) of the Competition Act.
The CCI flagged concerns that the platform, given its dominant position in the messaging market, effectively forced users to accept expanded data sharing as a condition for continued access.
April 2021 to August 2022: Delhi HC allows the probe to proceed
WhatsApp and Meta challenged the CCI’s decision to investigate the 2021 privacy policy update before the Delhi HC. They argued that the issues raised by the CCI primarily concerned data protection and user privacy, which they claimed fell outside the scope of competition law and thereby the Commission’s jurisdiction.
In April 2021, a Delhi HC judge declined to interfere at the threshold stage. Notably, the court held that the CCI’s order under Section 26(1) of the Competition Act merely directed an investigation, and did not record any final findings against WhatsApp or Meta. And since the order did not determine rights or impose penalties, the court said it saw no reason to halt the probe at that stage.
Meta and WhatsApp appealed this decision. In August 2022, a division bench of the Delhi HC dismissed the appeals and reaffirmed the CCI’s power to investigate. The bench made it clear that competition law scrutiny is not excluded simply because a matter also raises questions of privacy or data protection. It reiterated that a Section 26(1) direction only sets the investigative process in motion, and does not prejudge the outcome.
Throughout this period, the 2021 privacy policy remained in effect. At the same time, the…
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