Editorial: No compromise on data privacy

The Supreme Court has rightly questioned the moral uprightness of WhatsApp’s updated privacy policy

The Supreme Court’s stern warning to social media giants against commercial exploitation of personal data of users is timely and appropriate. Privacy is an inviolable right of the citizens and needs to be protected at all costs. Several questions are being raised over the way these technology platforms have been handling the user data and integrating it across multiple apps. Instant messaging platform WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, have particularly come under scanner for their practices with regard to the privacy policy. The apex court has rightly questioned the moral uprightness of the “take it or leave it” privacy policy of WhatsApp and categorically stated that it would not allow the messaging platform and its parent company to breach the right to privacy of millions of their “silent consumers” in India through sharing and commercial exploitation of personal data. The so-called updated privacy policy had imposed discriminatory conditions to strengthen its position in the market. On its part, the company has clarified that the new privacy policy was needed to make business accounts function better. Facebook-owned WhatsApp’s updated privacy policy guidelines will not be applicable in the European Region, thanks to the data protection law in place there. The company is legally bound not to share user data with Facebook in the European Region because it would be a contravention of the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The SC questioned the validity of consent, stating users were effectively forced to accept the privacy policy on a “take it or leave it” basis.

The apex court’s candid talk came while hearing petitions filed by Meta and WhatsApp against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) decision last year to uphold a Rs 213.14-crore penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India. The anti-competition regulator had found WhatsApp’s ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ approach in its 2021 privacy policy an abuse of its market dominance. It found the prior consent sought from users to share their data with Meta “manufactured”. The CCI had concluded that users were forced to share data for continued access to WhatsApp messaging services. Meta and WhatsApp had moved the apex court against the NCLAT decision. With every detail of a person available at the click of a mouse, privacy concerns are justified. There have also been reports of data mined from social media platforms being used to influence the electoral prospects of candidates. WhatsApp had faced flak earlier too when it was alleged that the platform was being used to forward messages whose authenticity could not be verified, leading to the proliferation of fake news. The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023, India’s first comprehensive legal framework for digital personal data privacy, for which rules were framed last year, does not contain any specific provision on the sharing of the data value of a consumer.

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