As per WhatsApp India’s ‘User Safety Monthly Report’ under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2022, WhatsApp messenger banned 1.9 million Indian accounts in May 2022. The accounts were banned on the basis of complaints received from users through its grievances division and the company’s own mechanism to prevent and detect law violators.
The company said it received 528 ban appeals through its grievance redressal mechanism of which 24 ‘accounts actioned’ were carried out, which means that the company took remedial action based on the report. This denotes either banning an account or a previously banned account being restored as a result of the complaint. In addition to responding to and actioning on user complaints through the grievance channel, WhatsApp also deploys tools and resources to prevent harmful behaviour on the platform.
Further, in compliance with the new India IT Rules 2021, Google India removed 400,000 pieces of bad content based on user complaints in May 2022. Meanwhile, the company mentioned that it received 25,694 complaints from individual users located in India via designated mechanisms during the one-month reporting period. Also, the company received as many as 25,694 complaints from individual users located in India via designated mechanisms during the one-month reporting period.
Separately, as per the monthly report released by Google, over 24,000 of these complaints involved copyright infringement, which was followed by trademark infringement (433) and other legal problems (257). Meanwhile, Google India removed 62,673 pieces of content that broke community guidelines in response to user complaints. The company mentioned that some requests alleged infringement of intellectual property rights, while others claimed violation of local laws prohibiting types of content on grounds such as defamation.
In addition to reports, the company asserts that it invests heavily in fighting harmful content online and use technology to detect and remove such content from their platform. In accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules), all social media platforms, is mandated to publish monthly transparency reports with details of complaints received from users in India and the actions taken, as well as removal actions taken as a result of automated detection.
Besides, as per monthly compliance report, Twitter banned more than 46,000 accounts of Indian users in May 2022 over violation of its guidelines. According to the report, Twitter removed 43,656 accounts for child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and 2,870 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism. The platform informed that it received 1,698 complaints in India via its local grievance mechanism between April 26, 2022 and May 25, 2022. This includes complaints pertained to online abuse/harassment (1,366), hateful conduct (111), misinformation and manipulated media (36), sensitive adult content (28), impersonation (25), among others.
Further, Twitter informed that it took action against 1,621 uniform resource locators (URLs) during the period, which includes URLs for violating norms related to online harassment (1,077), hateful conduct (362), and sensitive adult content (154). In addition, Twitter also processed 115 grievances which appealed account suspensions. In addition, the report said that no account suspensions were revoked.
