Do you remember that during the first half of last year? The terms of use of WhatsApp have led the company to great controversy? In certain regional versions of the same meta (then Facebook), it forced its users to allow data transfer from WhatsApp to Facebook, under penalty of not being able to use the service again. The reactions did not take long and the company itself recognized errors in communication about these changes.

Although since then Meta claims that it has made changes in this regard to improve its communicationReading the terms of use of WhatsApp is still a somewhat tedious task, and what’s worse, with enough ambiguity to cast doubt on what exactly we’re allowing. Be careful and this is not an exclusive critique of WhatsApp and Meta, in fact, ToS (Terms of Service), which were already quite complex in terms of software two and three decades ago, have only worsened.

Fortunately, there are bodies that monitor these movements precisely to protect users from possible abuse, and in this respect the European Union is slow, very slow, but generally safe. So as we can read in today’s briefing of the European Commission, Europe has called on WhatsApp to improve its communication on data policies and updates to its terms of use. service.

This step by the European Commission is the result several complaints from national consumer protection bodies which were presented between 2021 and 2022, due to the chaotic situation that occurred in January last year, when Facebook announced changes that will affect the data protection and privacy of WhatsApp users. So even though the movement is now going through a commission, several national agencies have previously issued a statement in this regard.

It is not even the first movement of the European Commission in this sense. The agency has previously contacted Meta to request improvements in this regard, as a result of which the company has since implemented some improvements. However, European regulators believe that it is still not enough that the conditions of WhatsApp need to be clearer in order to be comprehensible to European citizens, without ambiguity.

The big question now is how the Commission will act if Meta ignores this requirement and does not improve the readability and interpretability of the WhatsApp terms of use. Recent regulatory changes to this end allow for relatively high economic sanctions. And we won’t have to wait long since The Commission grants only one month to make these changes.