The Facebook-owned instant messaging platform has recently said in response to a Supreme Court of India order that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world’.
In May 2021, the Government of India had directed the messaging platform company that users who do not comply with Whatsapp’s new privacy policy can still continue to use all the functionalities of the company without any hindrance.
Recently, the apex court directed the American company to give wide publicity in the media about this very move by the government.
However, Whatsapp and its now parent company, the tech conglomerate Meta Platforms despite agreeing to Supreme Court’s order of issuing advertisements of the same in the newspapers, hace said that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world’, meaning that users who wish to use both the social media platforms Facebook as well as Whatsapp, will not be able to do so without cutting advertisements.
The two companies have even gone as far as stating that if any user wishes to get rid of ads, they will need to stop using Facebook because there is a ‘limited sharing of information between the two platforms’.
The Supreme Court order read, “We further direct that WhatsApp will give publicity of this aspect for the customers of WhatsApp by giving the advertisements in five leading newspapers two times over the next one month. The advertisements will necessarily incorporate the stand taken in its May 2021 letter to the government.”
The SC bench was led by Justice KM Joseph and comprised justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy and CT Ravikumar.
In May 2021, Whatsapp had said that it will not be limiting any functionality on its application for (Indian) users who have not complied with its new privacy policy, however it will keep reminding such users to accept the policy.
While the company clarified that it would not limit any functionality of the application to users who haven’t complied with its privacy policy, it did confirm that it will continue to remind users to accept the same.
“While the majority of users have already approved our update, no one will lose functionality on May 15 if they haven’t yet and we’ll be sure to provide reminders at a later time”, a company spokesperson had said.
