South Africa: Announced South African Competition Commission lawsuit against Meta regarding Whatsapp API

On 14 February 2022, the South African Competition Commission announced it had referred to the Competition Tribunal to prosecute Meta Platforms Inc. and its subsidiaries, WhatsApp and Facebook South Africa, for abuse of dominance. In particular, the Commission alleges that Facebook decided and expressed an ongoing intention to block Gov Chat and #LetsTalk, a technology start-up that connects government and citizens, from the WhatsApp Business Application Programming Interface (WhatsApp Business API). In addition, Facebook has imposed and selectively enforced exclusionary terms and conditions regulating access to the WhatsApp Business API, mainly restrictions on the use of data.