Instant messaging platform WhatsApp banned 74.2 lakh accounts in India in August, about 2 lakh more than the accounts it barred in the preceding month. WhatsApp banned these accounts in compliance with the new IT Rules of 2021. The banned WhatsApp accounts in India include 3,506,905 accounts which were proactively barred, before any reports from users.
In September, Meta-owned WhatsApp banned 72.28 lakh accounts in the country, including 3.1 lakh accounts which were barred proactively.
"We are an industry leader among end-to-end encrypted messaging services in preventing and combating abuse. In addition to our safety features and controls, we employ a team of engineers, data scientists, analysts, researchers, and experts in law enforcement, online safety, and technology developments to oversee these efforts," WhatsApp said in its India Monthly Report for October.
'Accounts Actioned' denotes reports the company took remedial action based on the report. Taking action denotes either banning an account or a previously banned account being restored as a result of the complaint.
The company in the report said, "This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp's own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform."
The government launched the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) mechanism earlier this year, which allows users to appeal against decisions of social media platforms by filing their complaints on a new portal.
The GAC, in effect, is an online dispute resolution mechanism, and users aggrieved by a decision of the Grievance Officer of an intermediary, say Meta or Twitter, can file their appeal or complaint through the new portal.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp is redesigning the chat interface on the Android version of its application, according to details shared by a feature tracker. The popular chat service is working on changing some of the colours in the app - this change will also affect how the app looks in dark mode.
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