WhatsApp removed nearly 24 lakh accounts in India in July, the company said in its monthly compliance report. The Meta-owned messaging service is an intermediary under IT regulations and publishes monthly reports of actions taken against accounts on the platform. According to WhatsApp, 14 lakh accounts were banned ‘proactively’, meaning they were removed without any reports from users. On Wednesday, Facebook and Instagram revealed that a total of 2.7 crore posts on the social media platform were removed in July.
According to WhatsApp Latest report Titled ‘India Monthly Report under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021’, the messaging service banned over 23,87,000 accounts in India in July.
WhatsApp said the accounts were banned based on user reports both through the company’s complaint redressal system, which is mandated under IT regulations, as well as through its own system to identify accounts that violate its terms of service.
It is worth noting that the company has removed around 24 lakh accounts, more than 18 lakh accounts were banned since March. The company removed 16 lakh and 19 lakh accounts in April and May respectively. Meanwhile, 22 lakh accounts were banned in June.
WhatsApp should also accept and resolve user complaints under the Grievance Redressal Mechanism mandated by the IT Rules. The firm says it received 574 user reports, of which 27 were acted upon.
The highest number of user reports were related to account ban appeals, and the company said it took action on 27 of these accounts. Meanwhile, the company marked 116 reports for account support, 13 reports for security and other reports as no action.
Meta revealed on Wednesday that it had removed 2.7 million posts from Facebook and Instagram in July as part of that month’s compliance report. Facebook, which is an intermediary under IT norms, removed 1.73 crore spam posts and 2.3 lakh posts for violent and graphic content as part of efforts to comply with government norms for the social media platform.
