Meta faces lawsuits and DMA push as WhatsApp opens to rivals

Meta is fighting lawsuits in Texas and India even as it rewrites how WhatsApp and Messenger talk to rival apps. The clash shows how regulators are forcing the company to choose between legal risk and product change.

The Texas Attorney General filed a suit this week accusing WhatsApp of failing to provide end‑to‑end encryption, while the Indian Supreme Court rebuked Meta and WhatsApp for exploiting Indian user data. At the same time, Meta announced concrete steps to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act, promising notifications, separate inboxes, and richer messaging features for third‑party services.

Legal pressure mounts on Meta

The Texas lawsuit alleges that WhatsApp does not actually encrypt messages from end to end, a claim that critics quickly labeled unsupported. The complaint was filed by a candidate for the U.S. Senate, adding a political flashpoint to an already contentious privacy debate. No technical audit has been presented, and the filing leans heavily on broad assertions rather than forensic evidence.

Across the globe, India’s highest court delivered a scathing critique of Meta’s privacy policy. The bench warned that the company cannot continue to harvest Indian users’ personal data without clear limits. The remarks came during a hearing on Meta’s appeal of a lower‑court ruling that had upheld a decision against the firm. The Supreme Court’s tone suggests that any further attempts to sidestep Indian data‑protection expectations will meet swift judicial pushback.

Both actions underscore a pattern: regulators are no longer content to accept vague assurances about encryption and data handling. Meta now faces the prospect of defending its technical architecture in court while simultaneously re‑engineering its products to meet external mandates.

Europe’s Digital Markets Act forces interoperability

The Digital Markets Act, which took effect last year, brands Meta as a “gatekeeper” and obliges it to let rival messaging services interoperate with WhatsApp and Messenger. Meta’s public post outlined how the company plans to meet that requirement. First, users will see a new notification when a third‑party chat app has built, tested, and launched the integration. The notification is meant to be a clear signal that the external service meets Meta’s security standards.

Second, the rollout will give users a choice: keep third‑party messages in a dedicated inbox or merge them with existing chats. That flexibility aims to preserve the familiar WhatsApp experience while still opening the door to competition. It also sidesteps a potential user‑experience nightmare where strangers’ messages suddenly appear in the primary feed.

Meta also promised “rich messaging” for these external chats. Users will be able to react to individual messages, see typing indicators, and receive read receipts—features that have long been standard inside WhatsApp but were missing in cross‑app conversations. The company said the next milestone is group‑chat support, slated for next year, followed by voice and video calling capabilities in 2027.

Technical roadmap and user experience implications

From a developer’s perspective, the announced features require more than a simple API bridge. The notification system must verify that a third‑party service has completed a full security audit, which implies a new compliance pipeline inside Meta’s infrastructure. The separate‑inbox option suggests that Meta will treat external messages as a distinct data store, likely with its own encryption keys and metadata handling.

Rich messaging adds another layer of complexity. React emojis, typing indicators, and read receipts all rely on real‑time state synchronization. Extending those signals to an external service means Meta must expose a standardized protocol that rivals can implement without leaking internal data. That is a non‑trivial engineering challenge, especially given the company’s history of keeping its messaging stack proprietary.

The timeline also raises eyebrows. Group‑chat support next year seems feasible, but voice and video calling only by 2027 feels deliberately distant. The delay may reflect the difficulty of routing real‑time media streams across competing networks while preserving end‑to‑end encryption—a point that the Texas AG lawsuit indirectly highlights.

Industry implications and competitive dynamics

If Meta delivers on its interoperability promise, the messaging market could see a shift from platform lock‑in to functional competition. Smaller players would no longer need to convince users to adopt a whole new app; they could simply plug into the existing WhatsApp or Messenger ecosystem. That could lower the barrier to entry for niche services that focus on specialized features such as encrypted file sharing or AI‑driven assistants.

However, the legal backdrop may temper any optimism. The Texas suit, even if ultimately dismissed, signals that U.S. state attorneys general are willing to challenge Meta’s security claims. A court ruling that forces Meta to change its encryption implementation could ripple through the interoperability work, forcing the company to redesign the integration layer to meet stricter standards.

In India, the Supreme Court’s admonition could translate into stricter data‑localisation requirements or heavier penalties for cross‑border data flows. Meta would then have to reconcile those constraints with the European mandate that expects seamless data exchange across borders. The tension between divergent regulatory regimes may push Meta toward a more modular architecture, but it also risks fragmenting the user experience.

What to watch

The next few months will reveal whether Meta can turn its interoperability roadmap into a functional product before the Texas court issues a ruling on the encryption claim. Keep an eye on the filing dates for any motions in the Texas case and on the Indian Supreme Court’s final order on Meta’s privacy appeal. On the product side, the first third‑party notification is expected to appear in Europe later this quarter; its rollout will be a litmus test for how quickly Meta can meet DMA obligations while preserving security. If the group‑chat feature lands on schedule, it will likely become the most visible proof point of a truly open messaging ecosystem.

Updates

• 2026-06-03 — Greg Bovino Was the Star at a European Remigration Conference (source)