Global technology giant Meta-owned WhatsApp on Wednesday announced to have taken down as many as 16.6 lakh accounts in India in the month of April under the new IT Rules 2021. In March the number of accounts banned from the platform stood at over 18 lakh.
According to WhatsApp, the company received about 844 grievance reports in April, and action was initiated against 123 accounts. In March, WhatsApp received 597 grievance reports, and the accounts ‘actioned’ were 74.
“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. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 1.6 million (1,666,000) accounts in the month of April,” WhatsApp said in a statement.
The company on Wednesday said that data shared highlights the number of Indian accounts banned by WhatsApp between April 1-30 using the abuse detection approach, which also includes action taken in furtherance of negative feedback received from users via its ‘Report’ feature.
“Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other states of the art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform,” the company said.
Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.
