Meta-owned WhatsApp Bans more than 18 lakh accounts in India during March

On Monday, Meta-owned WhatsApp informed that in the month of March it banned over 18 lakh bad accounts in India in compliance with the new IT Rules 2021. Previously, in the month of February, about 14 lakhs accounts were banned in India by Whatsapp. The messaging platform also informed that it received about 597 grievance reports in the same month from the country, and the accounts "actioned" were 74.

A spokesperson of the messaging platform, in a statement, said, “In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we've published our report for the month of March 2022. 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. WhatsApp banned over 1.8 million (1,805,000) accounts in the month of March.” Whatsapp further commented, “Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state of the art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform.” Under the new IT Rules 2021, social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.