In a unanimous decision, the Federal Court of Appeals for Civil and Commercial Matters dismissed the appeals filed by Whatsapp and Facebook against the judgments reached by the same Court—issued this past April—and confirmed the interim measure recommended by the CNDC.

The Court again reaffirmed the full validity of the decision adopted by the then-Secretariat of Domestic Trade, based on an opinion of the CNDC.

The interim measure is part of the CNDC's ongoing inquiry into whether the updated WhatsApp's terms of service and other business practices carried out by the same group of companies may constitute an abuse of a dominant position.

The order required WhatsApp to refrain from upholding changes to the application's terms of service and privacy policy set to take effect on May 15, 2021; refrain from sharing user data with other Facebook subsidiaries and third parties; and inform its users about the content of the decision.

The injunction's purpose is to prevent the worsening and continuation of an alleged abuse of WhatsApp's dominant position in the market in which the company operates, with potential harm to the conditions of competition. The measure also protects the principle of informational self-determination of millions of users of the instant messaging system in Argentina.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the inquiry is still ongoing within the CNDC.