Britain's media regulator Ofcom has fined Meta £450,000, about $597,000, for providing inaccurate information about its WhatsApp Business service in response to requests made as part of its telecoms market review. The penalty was announced on Thursday.
Ofcom reviewed the market for business bulk SMS text messages in 2025 to better understand the services available to businesses, and it sought information about WhatsApp for Business, including messaging volumes and revenues. The regulator issued formal information requests in July 2024 and June 2025.
The regulator said Meta had provided inaccurate information multiple times, with some inaccuracies remaining unresolved for up to 11 months before corrected data was submitted. Ofcom launched an investigation into Meta in January in relation to the inaccuracies, and concluded that the company had contravened five separate information requirements under Britain's Communications Act across two requests by failing to provide complete and accurate information.
The initial penalty was £600,000, but it was reduced by 25 per cent because Meta accepted liability and agreed to settle, and because it did not benefit from providing the inaccurate information. The fine is small by the standards of Meta's revenues, but it is a formal finding that one of the world's largest technology companies repeatedly gave wrong data to a regulator.
The case matters because regulators rely on the information companies provide to make decisions about markets. Ofcom's review of business messaging was intended to assess competition in a market used by companies to send appointment reminders, delivery notifications and other automated communications. Inaccurate data about the scale of WhatsApp Business could have distorted that assessment.
The investigation focused on Meta's compliance with information requests rather than on allegations of misconduct involving the content of WhatsApp messages or the company's treatment of customers. The distinction matters: the fine is about the accuracy of regulatory reporting, not about what happens inside the messaging service.
In a separate case, Meta, along with TikTok and X, lost a legal challenge against Ofcom in October over information requests made under Britain's online safety regime. The two cases together underline how much of the regulator's work now depends on compelling large platforms to hand over accurate data about their services.
Technology companies have faced growing scrutiny over their compliance with regulatory reporting requirements in Britain and across Europe, as regulators seek more information about how their services work and how large they are. Fines for inaccurate submissions are one of the few tools regulators have to enforce that discipline.
For Meta, the episode is an embarrassment rather than a financial blow, but it comes at a sensitive time. The company is already under pressure over its handling of data and its dealings with regulators, and the finding that it supplied wrong figures for almost a year will be noted by other regulators watching how it responds to information requests.
