WhatsApp banned over 10 lakh Indian accounts in February: Compliance Report

Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp has banned more than 10 lakh accounts (1.4 million to be specific) between February 1 and 28, according the company’s latest transparency report. These accounts were removed for being involved in harmful activities on the platform, such as harassing users, forwarding fake news, and more.
The report is published in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Every social media intermediary has to comply with the  IT rules 2021 and release a monthly transparency report on all the grievance the platforms received and what action did the platform take. This is the ninth report published WhatsApp.
“Over the years, we have consently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scients and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our ninth monthly report for the month of February 2022. This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 1.4 million accounts in the month of February,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson in a statement.

WhatsApp says that it has deployed tools and resources to prevent harmful behavior on the platform. Particularly focused on prevention because the company believes “it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening inthe first place than to detect it after harm has occurred.”
The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle: at regration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback, which WhatsApp receive in the form of user reports and blocks.  A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help WhatsApp improve effectiveness over time.
Earlier in January, WhatsApp removed over 18.5 lakh accounts and in December 2021, the company said it banned over 20 lakh accounts.