“I hope competition enforcers will closely look at this as they examine the ways in which the largest platform companies, like Facebook, have sought to cement their dominance, including in mobile messaging,” he said. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has been vocal about other WhatsApp issues, called for more antitrust scrutiny on WhatsApp’s “enormously concerning” push toward the new privacy policy. In the absence of legislation in the U.S., many see antitrust enforcement, including the potential unwinding of Facebook, as a sidedoor to begin tackling privacy problems. “We cannot let the industry create a new privacy regime on a de facto basis,” Chester said, “but because there’s no privacy legislation, because the FTC is basically seen as weak, anything goes.”Īlthough WhatsApp is updating its policies globally, because of the EU’s privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, it will not change WhatsApp’s data-sharing practices in the European region.
Congress’ continued failure to pass federal data privacy legislation - stalled by sticking points that are far from being resolved - has given Facebook and other tech companies room to set their own standards. “This is about exposing the tens of millions of WhatsApp users who use it for vital communications daily, to allow the company to more effectively track and target them with advertising and marketing to bolster its bottom line.”ĭespite calls for regulatory scrutiny on Facebook, and for the company to halt its plans for WhatsApp, Washington is quickly ceding ground to Silicon Valley on privacy. “This is not about protecting privacy, this integration this is exactly the opposite,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of advocacy group Center for Digital Democracy. Public interest groups say that Facebook is misleading users by playing up the encryption protections. The company has stressed that the actual content of personal messages remains end-to-end encrypted and not visible to Facebook or advertisers. Brazil and the European Union are also pursuing action against Facebook related to WhatsApp’s handling of user data.Īnd now users are being asked to give Facebook more power to use information about their shopping habits on WhatsApp for advertising and marketing purposes. Those cases, which allege that Facebook bought WhatsApp to prevent it from growing into a rival that would siphon off its users, are seeking to force Facebook to spin off WhatsApp and Instagram. early in the pandemic, coupled with it being tangled in antitrust suits and probes around the world, has drawn a new level of scrutiny to the way data on its more than two billion users is shared across the Facebook ecosystem.įacebook’s 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp is now a main focus of antitrust suits by the FTC and attorneys general from nearly every state. But the messaging app’s growth in the U.S.
WhatsApp and Facebook have long exchanged valuable metadata - “data about the data,” as Trahan put it - which offers insight into consumers’ behavior and is extremely important for advertisers. Lawmakers’ prolonged impasse on a national privacy law has left the door open for the most influential players in the tech world - including Facebook, Apple and Google - to self-regulate and write their own playbooks for how data can be shared across companies and around the world. Technology companies are growing and innovating faster than laws and leaders in Washington can move, and it’s unclear how the new administration and Congress will catch up.
The conflict highlights the mounting struggle on the part of Congress to check the power of tech companies, even when lawmakers’ constituents are up in arms. “Facebook should uphold their promise, and that of WhatsApp’s founders, to prioritize the privacy of their users.”
Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), who has led a push by some House Democrats to force Facebook to reverse course, said in an interview. “We can’t keep letting the largest companies in the world, founded in the United States, break their promises,” Rep.
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