EU considers making WhatsApp more responsible for tackling harmful content, spokesperson says

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Meta Platform's messaging unit WhatsApp will likely be subject to tough online content rules targeting illegal and harmful content after it met the user threshold under this regulation, a European Commission spokesperson said on Friday.

WhatsApp had about 51.7 million average monthly active users of its WhatsApp Channels in the European Union in the first six months of 2025, above the 45-million-user threshold set out in the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA requires such large platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content. Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Google's YouTube, TikTok, Temu and Microsoft's Linkedin are some of the companies labelled as very large online platforms under the DSA subject to this requirement.

"So the objective for the Commission here is to check what is actually private messaging which doesn't fall under the scope of the DSA and what are open channels that act more as a social media platform, this falls under the scope of the DSA," Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told a daily news briefing.

"So here we would indeed designate potentially WhatsApp for WhatsApp channels and I can confirm that the Commission is actively looking into it and I wouldn't exclude a future designation," he said.

WhatsApp was not immediately available to comment.

Companies risk fines of as much as 6% of their global annual revenue for DSA violations.