WhatsApp messaging app installed on phone, PHOTO: Nicolas Economou-NurPhoto / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia Images
Meta's messaging app WhatsApp is likely to be subject to stricter rules on online content targeting illegal and harmful content after it reached a user threshold, a European Commission spokesman said on Friday, according to Reuters.
WhatsApp had an average of around 51.7 million monthly active users of the WhatsApp Channels feature in the European Union in the first six months of 2025, surpassing the 45 million user threshold set by the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA requires large platforms to take more steps to combat illegal and harmful content. Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Google's YouTube, TikTok, Temu and Microsoft's Linkedin are some of the companies labeled as very large online platforms under the DSA subject to this requirement.
“So the objective of the Commission is to verify what is actually private messaging that does not fall under the scope of the DSA and what are the open channels that act more like a social media platform, that falls under the scope of the DSA,” Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier explained in a daily press briefing.
The European Commission is “actively looking into the possibility” of including WhatsApp in the category of large platforms, he said.
Companies face fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenue for DSA violations.
