WhatsApp Bans 1.66 Mn Indian Accounts For Flouting Community Guidelines

WhatsApp banned 1.66 Mn Indian accounts in April for flouting its community guidelines, the Meta-owned platform said in its monthly compliance report for April 1-April 30, 2022 period.

WhatsApp said it received 844 complaints and requests from users in India during the period via its grievance redressal system. A majority of these pertained to ban appeals, accounting for 670 requests. It was followed by issues related to account support (90), product support (34), safety (13), among others.

Based on these requests, action was initiated on 123 accounts. The platform also revoked bans on 122 WhatsApp accounts in response to complaints logged by users. 

Explaining its detection process, WhatsApp said, “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.”

In March, WhatsApp banned 1.8 Mn Indian accounts and received 597 grievances via local grievance redressal mechanisms.

Meanwhile, Twitter, in its latest compliance report, said that it received 1,480 complaints and banned 1,494 URLs for violating community guidelines. Facebook and Instagram cumulatively took action against 20.95 Mn pieces of content related to online harassment and hate speech.

Google India also received 23,322 complaints in April and took down 50,000 pieces of content for violating community guidelines and copyright infringement.