India’s Supreme Court delivered a scathing rebuke to WhatsApp and parent company Meta over the 2021 privacy policy update, warning that failure to protect user data could force the platform out of the country.
Court Issues Ultimatum
A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, including Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi, heard appeals against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ruling upholding a ₹213.14 crore penalty from the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The court demanded an affidavit from WhatsApp and Meta affirming no user data sharing, stating, “We will not allow you to share a single word of the personal data… Otherwise, you opt out of the country and withdraw your services.”
The bench criticized the policy’s “take it or leave it” consent model as exploitative, likening it to “the agreement between the lion and the lamb,” and called it “a decent way of committing theft of private information.”
Privacy Concerns Highlighted
Justices questioned how ordinary Indians—like “poor vegetable vendors, rickshaw pullers, or rural users”—could comprehend the “cleverly crafted” terms, emphasizing that privacy policies must be accessible to common citizens. The court rejected defenses of end-to-end encryption, focusing on metadata sharing with Meta for advertising and potential future data transfers.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta noted users become “mere products” through data commercialization, violating Article 21’s right to privacy.
Background and Next Steps
The 2021 policy allowed data sharing with Facebook (now Meta) entities, prompting CCI probes for abuse of dominance in messaging and ad markets. NCLAT upheld the penalty in 2025; Meta deposited it but appealed.
The matter is listed for February 9, 2026, with the Ministry of Electronics and IT impleaded. The court barred penalty withdrawal pending orders.
