As per WhatsApp India’s ‘User Safety Monthly Report’ under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, WhatsApp messenger banned over 2.2 million Indian accounts in June 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 632 grievance reports in June 2022 and the accounts “actioned” were 64. 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 111,493 pieces of bad content based on user complaints in June 2022. Besides, the company received 32,717 complaints from users in the same period, related to third-party content that is believed to violate local laws or personal rights on various Google platforms.
As per the monthly compliance report, the complaints pertained to third-party content that is believed to violate local laws or personal rights on various Google platforms. 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. The company also removed 528,846 pieces of content as part of automated detection in the above-mentioned period.
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.
