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Caught in the whirlwind of market power: The impact of WhatsApp's 2021 update on users' privacy in India
Journal of Data Protection & Privacy,
7
(1),
98-112
(2024)
Abstract
WhatsApp's entrenched market power has culminated in Indians being obliged to give up their privacy. This paper reports on an empirical study of WhatsApp to prove that it has been able to infringe consumers' privacy because of its market power, which has become insidious due to network effects, consumer inertia and asymmetry of information. Throughout this study, the author has not tried to quantify privacy or develop parameters of privacy, since the responses would have been flawed by subjectivity. Instead, the author has conducted this quantitative study to prove that consumers value privacy on paper but not when faced with the counteraction of free services. The researcher used questionnaires to understand the behaviour of Indian users towards privacy. The respondents were chosen based on a stratified sampling method, and analysis was done using descriptive statistics to quantitatively summarise the challenges faced by the respondents in switching away from WhatsApp.
The study concluded that users cannot exercise constraints due to the privacy paradox, consumer inertia and asymmetry of information. WhatsApp has the largest consumer base in India, and hence, its pervasiveness is considered extensively in this paper.
Keywords: asymmetry of information; WhatsApp; consumer inertia; Indian Competition Act; market power; privacy paradox; privacy
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Nikita Shah is Assistant Professor of Law at the Institute of Law, Nirma University. Her research focuses on competition law and the media, competition law and democracy, and the regulation of digital platforms. She completed her PhD in competition law at Gujarat National Law University, India, in 2023. She received an Upendra Baxi scholarship to study at the University of Warwick and holds a Double LLM from the university. She was also a Penn State Scholar at the Pennsylvania State University in the USA. She was a visiting professor at Masaryk University, Czech Republic in 2021. She was recently awarded the Excellence Award by ASSOCHAM in 2023.
