India’s ministry of IT is urging Facebook to withdraw WhatsApp’s privacy policy updates in the country. In a message to the Facebook-owned messaging platform, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology says the new privacy policy changes prompt serious questions on the autonomy of Indian users.
The ministry says the company’s privacy policy changes will steal the power of choice from Indian users.
“The proposed changes raise grave concerns regarding the implications for the choice and autonomy of Indian citizens… you are called upon to withdraw the proposed changes,” the ministry wrote in a letter to the platform(via Reuters).
The ministry also adds that Indian users have not been granted a choice to opt-out of data sharing with Facebook, unlike counterparts in the EU region. This “differential and discriminatory treatment” between users in the South Asian nation and their European counterparts portrays a “lack of respect for the rights and interest of Indian citizens,” the ministry says.
WhatsApp is also being questioned on the categories of user data collected, cross-border data flows, and whether the company has been profiling users based on usage.
Pressure from the Indian IT ministry is a huge deal. It adds more trouble to Facebook, which is already battling misinformation and user migration from its messaging app to Telegram and Signal.
India is WhatsApp’s major market around the world, with over 400 million users. The vast userbase in the country has seen Facebook splurge cash on various investments to expand into other sectors, including digital payments – WhatsApp Pay – and insurance.
Facebook recently postponed the deadline for users to accept the new policy changes up to May. Meanwhile, the Facebook-owned platform plans to do more to deal with misinformation.
WhatsApp has recently tried to cool down the massive criticism reinforcing that the “update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook.”
source/Reuters
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