Meta Verdict Shakes the World—India Must Script Digital Destiny
A recent chart presented by Meta during its ongoing antitrust trial with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sparked widespread discussion about the evolving nature of social media. (Image credit social media)
The US ruling in favour of Meta underscores a blunt truth: no one will fight India’s battles. New Delhi must build a confident, coherent digital governance strategy that unites competition law, data protection and sovereignty.
By P SESH KUMAR
New Delhi, November 19, 2025 — Meta’s sweeping win in the United States against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sent ripples across the global regulatory landscape. The US court, refusing to break up Meta or penalise its earlier acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, effectively blessed a traditional and narrow reading of antitrust law at a moment when digital markets demand a more modern vocabulary of data power, network effects and platform dominance.
While the judgment emboldens Meta and strengthens its global bargaining position, it does not alter India’s legal path, nor does it dilute New Delhi’s determination to pursue data localisation, regulatory oversight and digital sovereignty.
Instead, it sharpens the contrast between the American and Indian approaches to platform regulation and signals that India must rely on its own competition jurisprudence, data protection law and localisation frameworks to discipline Big Tech.
The US court ruling in FTC v. Meta is the kind of judicial moment that can change the temperature of global tech regulation. When Judge James Boasberg dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to unwind Meta’s decade-old acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, observers across the world immediately recognised that the decision was not merely American housekeeping.
It was a signal-loud, clear and perhaps unsettling-that US antitrust law remains anchored in an older world where size alone is not an offence, where competition is judged through a narrow lens of prices and market share, and where distant memories of anti-trust crusades cannot be revived simply to discipline digital giants.
The court held that the FTC had failed to prove that Meta currently holds monopoly power and had not shown that Instagram and WhatsApp were still the crown jewels of an allegedly suffocating ecosystem.
In a world now dominated by TikTok scrolls and YouTube shorts, the judge concluded that Meta is one giant among many, not a dictator of social life.
This was an enormous reprieve for Meta. A forced breakup would have shattered its integrated architecture and disrupted the engines of cross-platform data and advertising revenue. Instead, the court has given Meta a legal shield and a psychological boost: the argument that historic acquisitions cannot be punished retroactively, and that digital competition today is not as one-sided as critics claim. Investors exhaled, regulators took note and rival platforms recalibrated their expectations of where Washington stands in the new era of platform governance.
But even as Meta celebrates, the ruling reveals something deeper about the shortcomings of American antitrust thinking. The court’s insistence on a rigid traditional test-asking whether Meta can raise “prices” or degrade “quality”— is almost quaint in the context of the modern attention economy, where the currency is data rather than dollars and domination is built through network effects rather than pricing power.
Digital markets are not markets of goods but of behaviour, influence and surveillance, and their economics cannot be captured solely through a twentieth-century antitrust playbook. The judgment therefore marks not only the defeat of the FTC but the exhaustion of an old legal framework that still struggles to see the competitive harm in cross-platform data aggregation, algorithmic amplification and user lock-in.
Implications for India
For India, however, the implications are more nuanced and far from discouraging. First, the US ruling has no legal effect in India. Meta cannot rely on an American judgment to escape scrutiny from the Competition Commission of India or the Data Protection Board.
Indian regulators have already demonstrated a willingness to probe Meta’s data practices, as seen in the ongoing WhatsApp privacy policy dispute, where questions of data sharing and market power are squarely on the table. The tribunal proceedings in Delhi have already upheld the principle that competition law may examine data-driven harms even when privacy concerns overlap. This marks a jurisprudential divergence from Washington and places India closer to Europe’s more assertive regulatory philosophy.
Second, India’s regulatory trajectory is fundamentally different from the American one. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act and its forthcoming rules are slowly but firmly building a system of conditional data localisation, mandatory audits, and enhanced obligations for Significant Data Fiduciaries.
RBI’s payment data localisation regime is already one of the strictest in the world, and sectoral laws in telecom, fintech and e-commerce are moving toward stronger sovereignty controls. In India, the idea that certain categories of sensitive or critical data must remain on Indian soil is becoming part of the default architecture of digital governance.
Meta must therefore operate in a landscape where India is simultaneously a major market, a sovereign regulator and a rising digital power determined not to cede informational control to foreign platforms.
Third, Meta’s victory does give the company new confidence in negotiations with India. It now has a stronger narrative: if US courts have refused to call it a monopolist, why should India go further? Why should localisation be uncompromising when the company’s systems are global? Why should data flows be fenced in when other democracies are building data-bridge agreements? These arguments will appear in boardrooms, closed-door consultations and policy submissions.
But India’s counter-narrative is equally powerful: digital sovereignty is not an optional luxury but a strategic imperative. Data is not merely a commercial resource but a national asset with implications for security, privacy and economic independence. And Indian regulators, unlike the FTC, have the advantage of acting early rather than retroactively.
In this evolving contest between a newly emboldened Meta and a newly assertive India, the path ahead will be defined by balance: ensuring India remains a vibrant digital market open to innovation while maintaining its sovereign authority over data, competition and algorithmic accountability. The Meta judgment may alter the tone of global debates, but it does not weaken India’s resolve. Instead, it clarifies the need for India to build its own analytical frameworks and regulatory muscles without waiting for Washington or Brussels to set the pace.
Refine Digital Strategy
The most important lesson for India from Meta’s American triumph is that no other jurisdiction will fight its battles. India must refine its own digital strategy with clarity and confidence.
That begins with strengthening the analytical capacity of the Competition Commission of India so that investigations into data-driven dominance are evidence-based, economically grounded and technologically literate. It requires accelerating the operationalisation of the Data Protection Board and completing the DPDP Rules in a manner that gives businesses predictability while protecting national interests.
It involves ensuring that localisation requirements are not symbolic gestures but part of a coherent framework linking privacy, cybersecurity and law enforcement needs. It also calls for deeper cooperation with the European Union on digital markets and data protection, where India’s instincts align far more closely than with the American reluctance to confront platform power.
Above all, India must articulate a unified doctrine of digital sovereignty that harmonises competition law, data protection and sectoral regulations rather than treating them as disconnected silos. The coming years will not be a simple tug-of-war between India and Meta but a defining experiment in how a large democracy manages global technology platforms.
The US judgment does not constrain India; it merely highlights the importance of acting with foresight rather than waiting for crises. India now has an opportunity to shape a regulatory future where innovation thrives, user rights are protected and platform power is kept in balance. The Meta verdict may have closed one chapter in the United States, but for India it marks the beginning of a more confident and self-authored phase of digital governance.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
Follow The Raisina Hills on WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn
About The Author
