India’s highest court issued a stern warning to WhatsApp on Tuesday, suggesting it may bring back a ban on the app’s data-sharing practices. The judges believe the messaging service uses a privacy policy that tricks people into giving up their personal information. This move could stop WhatsApp from sharing user data with its parent company, Meta, and other platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
The legal fight began in November 2024 when India’s antitrust watchdog hit Meta with a $25.4 million fine. The watchdog also blocked WhatsApp from sharing user data for advertising purposes for five years. Although an appeals court later paused that data-sharing ban, both the government and Meta took the fight to the Supreme Court to settle the matter for good.
During the hearing, Chief Justice Surya Kant criticized how Meta writes its rules. He told the company’s lawyers that the privacy policy seems “cleverly designed to mislead users.” The Chief Justice specifically worried about vulnerable people, asking how an elderly woman or someone from a rural village could possibly understand what Meta actually plans to do with their data when the language is so confusing.
India is the most important market for Meta. While the company does not release exact numbers for every country, researchers estimate that hundreds of millions of Indians use Facebook and Instagram daily. WhatsApp has already pushed back, claiming that a total ban on data sharing might force the company to pause certain features or break how the app works in India, which would cause major problems for its business.
This is not a new problem for Meta. In 2023, European officials also accused the company of using confusing language to hide its data practices. Meta eventually had to rewrite those policies in plain, simple English for European users. In India, regulators argue that WhatsApp gives people an unfair choice: either accept the invasive new rules or lose access to the app entirely. The Supreme Court will continue the hearing next week before making a final ruling.
