Will Your WhatsApp Stop Working? Meta Threatens To Stop Chat App Services In India Over Privacy Row

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court finds itself at the center of a pivotal legal battle between tech giants WhatsApp and Meta (formerly Facebook) and the Indian Government. The dispute revolved around a new law which mandates social media platforms to disclose the originators of messages upon court order.

WhatsApp has said to Delhi High Court that if forced to breach message encryption the platform's existence in India would be at stake. According to the company, its end-to-end encryption is crucial for safeguarding user privacy which cannot be compromised. With over 900 million users India stands as one of WhatsApp's largest markets. ()

Advocate Tejas Karia who represented WhatsApp highlighted that people are drawn to the platform due to the privacy it guarantees, particularly for its end-to-end encryption of messages. “As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes,” Tejas Karia, the lawyer representing WhatsApp, stated. ()

However, the Indian government has emphasized the critical need to trace message originators in order to combat harmful content and uphold online safety standards. They assert that social media platforms have a responsibility to assist in identifying individuals who spread misinformation or instigate violence.

The court has emphasized the need for a balanced approach and postponed the proceedings to August 14. It announced that these two cases would be heard alongside a group of cases transferred to the High Court by the Supreme Court.