Govt Asks Meta To Pause WhatsApp Username Rollout: Report
Superadmin
The Centre has reportedly issued a notice to Meta to pause the rollout of WhatsApp’s proposed username feature in India and furnish a detailed explanation within three days.
As per a report by ET, the government’s concern stems from the feature’s potential to be misused for impersonation and identity fraud. Apart from impersonation and identity fraud, policymakers were also examining possible implications for data sharing with other Meta apps — Facebook and Instagram.
The proposed feature, whose roll out was in the process, allows users to connect with each other by using usernames instead of sharing phone numbers. Meta announced the launch of the feature yesterday.
This would shift WhatsApp closer to identity systems used by rivals Telegram and Signal while also reducing the exposure of personal phone numbers.
“Starting this week, you can reserve a username to use later this year when we launch this feature. With over three billion people on WhatsApp a lot of names overlap, which is why we’re opening reservations early so everyone has the opportunity to select the username that matters to them,” Meta said in a blog post yesterday.
The feature also had the potential to create friction with traceability obligations under the IT Rules, 2021, as well as data protection expectations under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
ET quoted a Meta spokesperson saying that linking WhatsApp with Facebook or Instagram would remain optional for Meta in the future. Meta is yet to issue a statement on the Centre’s directions.
India is a critical market for Meta given that it is WhatsApp’s largest single-country market globally with over 500 Mn users on the platform.
The scrutiny reflected India’s increasingly assertive stance towards large social media intermediaries.
The government has stepped up enforcement expectations around grievance redressal, traceability and data governance for major digital platforms, while the Competition Commission of India had earlier investigated Meta and WhatsApp over privacy-policy-linked data-sharing concerns.
Meanwhile, Telegram, which also allows users to converse with each other without phone numbers, was at the centre of controversy around the recent NEET PG leak. Holding the social media platform accountable for providing a platform to disburse the leaked examination papers, the government ordered a temporary ban on it for a few days leading up to the reconvening of the examination.
The government alleged that Telegram’s cloud-based architecture, public channels, bots, large groups and username-based identities had enabled criminal activities ranging from cyber fraud and financial scams to drug trafficking, child exploitation, piracy and terrorism.
Earlier last week, the messaging platform was back in the spotlight after the Narcotics Control Bureau flagged the platform as a key channel for drug-related advertising.
The post Govt Asks Meta To Pause WhatsApp Username Rollout: Report appeared first on Inc42 Media.
