For years, Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, has treated user data as the “exhaust” of its messaging engine—a valuable byproduct to be harvested and refined for its advertising machine. The update allowed for increased data sharing between the messaging app and its parent, Meta. While WhatsApp insisted that end-to-end encryption kept messages private, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) saw the move as an abuse of dominance. It argued that for the average Indian user, “leaving” WhatsApp is not a viable option as it is the country’s digital town square. If Meta uses a rural Indian’s behavioural trends to sell targeted ads, who owns the profit derived from that data?

Source: The Hindu February 04, 2026 15:40 UTC