WhatsApp Bans 3 Mn Indian Accounts Between Jun 16 And Jul 31

Facebook owned WhatsApp has banned over 3 Mn Indian accounts between June 16 to July 31 as per its latest compliance report. This is a significant rise from the total number of Indian accounts around 2 Mn it banned during May 15 to June 15, 2021. 

The messaging app revealed that it has used a detection abuse approach to outlaw such WhatsApp accounts. The company highlighted that apart from taking action on user complaints received through the grievance channel, meaning reaching out to WhatsApp’s chief grievance officer, the company has also deployed tools and resources to prevent harmful behavior on the platform. 

WhatsApp revealed that their detection abuse operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle that is at time of registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback that the messaging platform receives through user reports and account blocks. WhatsApp’s team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time.

As per the latest report, the messaging platform has received a total of 594 complaints during June 16 to July 31. Further shedding light on the report, the company said that requests for banning an account accounted for the highest number of grievances. WhatsApp received a total of 316 ban requests of which it had taken action against 73 accounts. This is a noteworthy rise from 204 ban requests it received during May 15 to June 15, 2021. 

The Facebook owned company received a total of 137 requests for account support of which it had taken action against one account. The platform received 64 requests for product support and has not taken any action. There were 43 complaints related to product support, 20 related to other support, and 8 complaints on safety issues.  Overall, WhatsApp has taken action against 74 accounts. 

WhatsApp released this report to comply with the newly enacted Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The new guidelines was brought in place to bring more transparency and prevent dissemination of misinformation and abuse dictates social media platforms with more than 5 Mn users in India to publish its compliance report at an interval of 30 days along with hiring a chief compliance officer, chief grievance officer and nodal contact person. 

Yesterday (August 31), Google in its transparency report revealed that it had removed a total of 95,680 content and received a total of 36,934 complaints via designated mechanism during July 1, 2021 and July 31, 2021. Twitter alternative Koo earlier in August  reported that it had removed 2,385 posts during the month of July and self moderated 63,693 posts during the same period.