[ad_1]
Facebook has been The Competition Court blocked him and prevented him from removing GovChat, a communications service used by the South African government, from his WhatsApp instant messaging platform.
The court said Thursday that Facebook, WhatsApp and Facebook South Africa cannot remove GovChat on an interim basis pending further investigation. Facebook owns the WhatsApp messaging platform, which is dominant in South Africa and many other markets around the world.
GovChat and its partner company Hashtag LetsTalk, or #LetsTalk, filed a request for interim relief after Facebook threatened to remove GovChat from WhatsApp due to an alleged breach of the instant messaging app’s terms of service. The US social media giant is said to be eager to secure its own direct business with the government.
“The petitioners asked the court to prevent the defendants (Facebook and WhatsApp) from removing or ‘removing’ them from WhatsApp’s paid commercial messaging platform, pending the outcome of their complaint against Facebook before the Competition Commission …” the court said in a statement. announcing your decision.
Facebook and WhatsApp cannot exclude applicants from their WhatsApp Business account until a hearing on applicants’ complaint filed with the commission is concluded, or for six months, whichever is earlier.
The first face case
Nor can they engage in any conduct that directly or indirectly undermines GovChat and # LetsTalk’s relationships with their customers in order to achieve the same result as deleting them. However, applicants cannot add new customers or users to the WhatsApp Business account either. Also, they cannot launch, expand, or sell new “use cases” to these customers.
“It is not our role, in the provisional measures proceedings, to reach a definitive finding of a violation. A successful applicant should only do one prima facie case, not to establish your case on a balance of probabilities, ”the court said.
“Applicants have established prima facie case of prohibited conduct on the part of the defendants in the sense that the selective application of its rules against the plaintiffs amounts to an effective refusal to negotiate … prima facie case of exclusionary conduct and anti-competitive effects … Respondents, on the other hand, have not provided any evidence of pro-competitive gains to offset the prima facie anti-competitive effects “.
The court emphasized that it has not decided whether WhatsApp and Facebook have violated the Competition Law. Rather, it has only found that there is sufficient evidence that GovChat and #LetsTalk have a prima facie case they are granted a precautionary measure while the Competition Commission investigates their complaint.
If the commission’s investigation ultimately concludes that there is a case, then it will refer the matter to court for prosecution. Only after a hearing on that referral will the court determine whether or not there has been a violation.
“Consequently, the court concludes that the plaintiffs have succeeded in showing that WhatsApp is, at least, prima facie dominant in the market for over-the-top (OTT) messaging applications via smartphones in South Africa. Furthermore, the court observes that the applicants are both clients and competitors of the dominant company in the secondary market for government messaging services. It is in this market that the court understands that part of the plaintiffs’ complaint arises: their complaint is that WhatsApp is using its domain in the OTT messaging market to act by excluding competitors in the government messaging market when it perceives competitive competition. threatens in that market, ”the court said.
GovChat currently assists the health department with Covid-19 related education, symptom tracking, and testing. It also helps the South African department of social development and the Social Security Agency to allow citizens to apply for emergency grants.
“Members of the public who depend on the GovChat platform for assistance related to emergency grants and Covid-related information will be deprived of access to these critical services during the pandemic if it was removed from the WhatsApp platform, pending the result of the complaint filed with the commission… ”, said the court.
‘Irreparable damage’
“The court concludes that the balance of convenience favors the granting of provisional measures to applicants who provide an invaluable service to both government departments and citizens. Applicants will suffer irreparable harm if they do not ship, which will also ultimately negatively affect the public interest at a very critical time in the Covid-19 pandemic. We cannot conceive of any actual harm that the defendants will suffer during the period of our order, pending the outcome of the commission’s investigation. “
Facebook has previously argued that the dispute is purely commercial in nature and does not raise anti-competitive concerns under South African law.
Facebook has accused GovChat of violating the contractual terms of use of the WhatsApp Business API, or application programming interface, which connects and integrates third parties to the platform.
GovChat and #LetsTalk have argued in court that they have invested more than R50 million of donor money in developing the technology behind the platform. If Facebook is allowed to exit GovChat, it will not only be forced out of the market, but will leave millions of people dependent on the service unable to access it at the peak of the second wave of Covid-19 infections in South Africa. . the applicants said in documents filed with the court.
