WhatsApp banned over 23 lakh accounts in India in just a month; here's why

WhatsApp has released its monthly report in compliance with the Information Technology Rules act. In the latest report, the Meta-owned instant messaging application revealed the data of the number of accounts it has banned from its platform from October 1 to October 31, 2022. The messaging application has banned 23,24,000 accounts. Some of these accounts were banned after a complaint was raised against them. However, most of them were banned because they failed to stick to WhatsApp's policies.

In the month of October, out of the 23,24,000 WhatsApp accounts that were banned, 8,11,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from the users.

WhatsApp essentially classifies the banned accounts into two categories:

• Grievances received from users in India via the grievance mechanisms of WhatsApp.
• Accounts actioned in India through the prevention and detection methods for violating the laws of India or WhatsApp’s Terms of Service.
• Grievances reported in October

A meager total of just 701 reports were received from users and WhatsApp only acted on 34 of the complaints received from the users. These complaints are sent to an India-specific Grievance officer at wa@support.whatsapp.com. The officer can also be contacted via post.

Also read: 'No evidence': WhatsApp rejects claims of data leak of 500 million users

Why most of the WhatsApp accounts were banned

WhatsApp deploys tools and resources to prevent harmful behavior on the platform. The messaging application claims that it is focused on
prevention because they believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred.

The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback.

A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve the effectiveness of the tools over time.

Also read: WhatsApp rolling out new ‘Message Yourself’ feature; here’s how you can use it