WhatsApp may quickly be topic to stricter scrutiny beneath the EU’s Digital Companies Act

Meta’s messaging app WhatsApp might quickly be topic to deeper scrutiny (and punishment) beneath the European Fee’s Digital Companies Act, Reuters reports. As a result of the app’s broadcasting characteristic WhatsApp Channels grew to round 51.7 million common month-to-month lively customers within the European Union within the first six months of 2025, the characteristic has crossed the 45-million-person barrier that lets DSA guidelines apply.

A platform is designated as a “very large online platform” or VLOP as soon as it has 45 million month-to-month customers or extra, in response to the European Fee. As soon as an app or service passes that quantity, it is topic to the DSA and all its guidelines about how digital platforms ought to function, notably round eradicating unlawful or dangerous content material. Firms could be fined as much as six p.c of their world annual income for not complying with the DSA.

WhatsApp historically capabilities as a personal messaging app, however its Channels characteristic, which lets customers make one-sided posts to anybody who follows their channel, does look much more like Meta’s different social media platforms. “So right here we’d certainly designate doubtlessly WhatsApp for WhatsApp Channels and I can verify that the Fee is actively trying into it and I would not exclude a future designation,” a Fee spokesperson mentioned in a day by day information briefing Reuters considered.

Engadget has requested Meta to touch upon WhatsApp’s doable new designation. We’ll replace this text if we hear again.

The chance that WhatsApp might turn out to be a regulatory goal within the EU was first reported in November 2025, however Meta has been coping with DSA-related fines since effectively earlier than then. Meta was charged with violating the EU law in October 2025 due to the way it asks customers to report unlawful content material on Fb and Instagram. Earlier that month, a Dutch courtroom additionally ordered the company to vary the way it presents the timelines on its platforms as a result of individuals within the Netherlands weren’t “sufficiently in a position to make free and autonomous selections about using profiled suggestion programs” within the firm’s apps.