BRUSSELS, January 26, 2026, 20:16 CET
- The European Commission designated WhatsApp’s Channels as a “very large online platform” under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
- Meta has four months, until mid-May, to meet added duties aimed at curbing illegal and harmful content.
- WhatsApp’s private messaging service is excluded; the designation targets the public-facing Channels feature.
The European Commission on Monday designated Meta’s WhatsApp “Channels” as a very large online platform under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, stepping up its duties to tackle illegal and harmful content and giving the company until mid-May to comply. WhatsApp’s Channels averaged 51.7 million monthly users in the EU in the first half of 2025, above the law’s 45 million threshold, the Commission said. (Reuters)
The move matters because Channels is built for one-to-many broadcasts, not private chats, and it can push content quickly to large audiences inside the EU. Brussels has been widening its enforcement of the DSA, a sweeping rulebook meant to force big online services to identify and reduce risks tied to illegal content and other harms.
The Commission said earlier this month it was weighing whether to treat Channels as a platform service under the DSA. Monday’s designation draws a line: WhatsApp’s core private messaging service is not covered, but Channels is, and it now faces the strictest layer of requirements reserved for the biggest services.
In its statement, the Commission described WhatsApp as a hybrid product that mixes private messaging with an online platform feature. Channels, it said, lets recipients disseminate information, updates and announcements to a broad audience, putting it inside the DSA’s scope as a platform service. (Europa)
The added duties include assessing and mitigating “systemic risks” — jargon for risks that can spread at scale — such as breaches of fundamental rights and freedom of expression, election manipulation, the spread of illegal content and privacy concerns, the Commission said.
Oversight will sit with the Commission, working with Ireland’s digital services coordinator, Coimisiún na Meán, the statement said, reflecting how many large tech firms base key EU operations in Ireland.
The designation puts WhatsApp’s Channels alongside other services already classed as very large under the DSA, including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet’s YouTube, TikTok, Temu and Microsoft’s LinkedIn, according to the Commission.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said the company would keep updating its controls as Channels grows. “We remain committed to evolving our safety and integrity measures in the region, ensuring they align with relevant regulatory expectations and our ongoing responsibility to users,” the spokesperson said.
But the tougher rules can be expensive to meet, given the volume of material that may need review, and they sharpen privacy debates about how far platforms should go in scanning content, especially on services that also trade on secure communications.
Meta now has four months to line up compliance for Channels, a countdown that will test how EU regulators handle a feature that sits in the grey zone between social feed and messaging.
