WhatsApp bans 2.2 mn India accounts in June after abuse complaints

Monthly report is part of action under Information Technology rules

WhatsApp banned more than 2.2 million Indian accounts in June after users reported abusive content, said on Tuesday the messaging platform owned by Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.

WhatsApp has to publish a monthly report to follow India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. It banned more than 1.9 million accounts in May and over 1.6 million in April. According to market data firm Statista, there are more than 487 million WhatsApp users in India.

"We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred,” WhatsApp said in the report.

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 works closely with the system to evaluate different situations.

According to IT Rules, social media companies are required to appoint a resident grievance officer in India to address content-related complaints. WhatsApp said its grievance officer received 632 complaints in June 2022, while it has banned 64 accounts after the review of the complaints.

“WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for the month of June 2022.” said WhatsApp. 

The platform banned 2,210,000 Indian accounts in June.