Over 23 lakh bad accounts were blocked by Meta-owned WhatsApp in India in July in accordance with the new IT Rules, 2021, the company said on Thursday.
A total of 574 complaints were received by WhatsApp in India in July, out of which 27 were “acted upon”.
Over 22 lakh accounts with bad records were restricted in June by the platform with over 400 million users. WhatsApp has published its July 2022 report according to the IT Rules 2021. In July, over 2.3 million accounts (2,387,000) were banned by WhatsApp, according to the company spokesperson.
The report presented data on actions taken by WhatsApp following complaints received from Indian users in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
Accounts which violated the laws of the land or the terms of service were dealt with through its prevention and detection mechanisms. A monthly compliance report must be published by major digital and social media platforms with over five million users under the upgraded IT Rules 2021.
In terms of end-to-end encrypted messaging services, WhatsApp leads in preventing abuse. To keep our users safe on our platform, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technologies, data scientists and experts, and processes,” said a spokesperson for the company.
Based on complaints received from users via WhatsApp’s grievance channel and its own mechanism to detect and prevent violations, WhatsApp banned over 19 lakh Indian accounts in May, according to its latest monthly report. As a result of the new IT regulations that came into effect last year, large digital platforms (with over 50 lakh users) are required to publish compliance reports every month that summarize complaints received and actions taken.
