Meta-Owned WhatsApp Comes Under Europe’s DSA Umbrella
WhatApp’s popularity in Europe has placed it under a new regulatory threshold in the region.
The Meta-owned messaging service’s user level has reached a point that it is now considered a “very large online platform” (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), Reuters reported Wednesday (Feb. 19), citing a regulatory filing.
The company said it had roughly 46.8 million average monthly active users in the 27-country European Union in the six month period to December, higher than the 45-million-user threshold established by the DSA. The two other major Meta-owned social networks, Facebook and Instagram, already meet VLOP requirements.
“We can indeed confirm that WhatsApp has published user numbers above the threshold for designation as a Very Large Online Platform under the Digital Services Act,” European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Reuters.
Upon receiving the VLOP designation, platforms have four months to meet DSA requirements such as identifying and assessing risks relating to illegal conduct, public security and the protection of minors.
Companies that violate the act can face fines for as much as 6% of their global yearly revenue. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has blasted the EU’s tech rules and campaigned for help from President Donald Trump, who recently called such fines “a form of taxation.”
Meta is already combatting a $831 million fine levied by the European Union, which had accused the tech giant of tapping into user data to give its Facebook Marketplace service an unfair advantage.
The EC, the enforcement body for the EU, announced the fine in November, saying its investigation had found that Meta gave its online classified ads service a significant edge over its rivals by automatically offering the users of its social network access to it, no matter whether they want it or not.
The EC also ruled that Meta imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads services that advertise on its platforms, allowing it to use data generated by their ads to benefit Facebook Marketplace.
“This is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” Margrethe Vestager, the EC’s then-executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said at the time. “Meta must now stop this behaviour.”
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