WhatsApp will reportedly face further EU regulation

WhatsApp is following in the footsteps of fellow Meta-owned companies, Instagram and Facebook. The European Commission will give WhatsApp’s open channels the designation of Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), Bloomberg reports. The Commission has yet to make a public announcement on the matter, but has reportedly told Meta.

This label gives the EU greater regulatory power over WhatsApp in areas such as content moderation and data sharing. WhatsApp will also need to conduct an annual independent audit and have transparent advertising practices, among other mandates.

The new label isn’t exactly a surprise. In February, WhatsApp announced that it had averaged about 46.8 million EU users in the second half of 2024. The DSA states that the VLOP designation should be given when a platform exceeds 45 million monthly EU users.

This designation will strictly be for WhatsApp’s open channels feature. Individual messaging should not be impacted in any way and should remain private between the parties involved. Alongside Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp joins companies such as Amazon, Google and ByteDance in the VLOP designation.