WhatsApp reveals it banned 2 million Indian users in first compliance report
Premium- Over 95% of these bans between 15 May and 15 June are because of unauthorized use of automated or bulk messaging
Messaging platform WhatsApp banned two million Indian accounts for abusing the platform’s services between 15 May and 15 June, the company said in its first compliance report published under India’s new IT rules.
More than 95% of these bans are because of unauthorized use of automated or bulk messaging, the company said on Thursday. The compliance report will be published every 30-45 days from now on.
“The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle, at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback, which we receive in the form of user reports and blocks. A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time," the company said in the report.
Indian accounts are those registered with the suffix +91.
Further, the company’s grievance officer received a total of 345 requests during the period. This includes 70 account support queries, 204 appeals to a ban, 20 other support queries, 43 product support queries, and 8 pertaining to user safety issues. The company took action against 63 of these requests.
The platform did not disclose how many information requests it received from the government. WhatsApp is fighting a case against the Indian government, opposing the traceability clause in India’s new IT Rules, which requires platforms to trace the first originator of a message within the country.
“WhatsApp is an industry leader among end-to-end encrypted messaging services in preventing and combating abuse. In line with the requirements of India’s Intermediary Guidelines, 2021, today we have published our first edition of the monthly report," the company said.
Significant social media intermediaries, which is defined as any intermediary with more than 5 million users in India, are required to publish monthly compliance reports under India’s new IT rules.
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WhatsApp’s parent Facebook, microblogging platform Twitter and search engine giant Google had also published their compliance reports earlier this month. Twitter has also published its global transparency report, according to which India was the “single largest source" of government information requests. The country accounted for 25% of all information requests received during July-December 2020.
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