WhatsApp announced that it banned over 18 lakh bad accounts in India in the month of March in compliance with the new IT Rules 2021. The company said that it also received 597 grievance reports in the same month from the country, and the accounts “actioned” were 74.
In a statement, the spokesperson of WhatsApp said: “In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for the month of March 2022. This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform.”
“WhatsApp banned over 1.8 million (1,805,000) accounts in the month of March,” the spokesperson added.
According to Meta owned WhatsApp, data shared highlights the number of Indian accounts banned by WhatsApp between March 1-31 using the abuse detection approach, which also includes action taken in furtherance to negative feedback received from users via its “Report” feature.
For those who are unaware, under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.
“Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state of the art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform,” the company added.
To recall, WhatsApp banned 14.26 lakh Indian accounts in February on the basis of complaints received from users via grievances channel and through its own mechanism to prevent and detect violations. As many as 335 grievance reports were received and 21 accounts were “actioned” between February 1 and February 28.
Out of the total reports received, 194 pertained to ban appeal while others were in the categories of account support, product support and safety, among others.
“We respond to all grievances received except in cases where a grievance is deemed to be a duplicate of a previous ticket. An account is ‘actioned’ when an account is banned or a previously banned account is restored, as a result of a complaint,” the company noted.
