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 2.69 million Indian accounts in September 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 number of accounts blocked in September 2022 were 15 per cent more than the 2.32 million accounts the messaging platform banned in August 2022.
According to the latest WhatsApp report, the platform received 666 grievances in September 2022 but took action only against 23. In addition to responding to and taking action on user complaints through the grievance channel, WhatsApp also deployed tools and resources to prevent harmful behaviour on the platform.
Meanwhile, Meta took down over 30.7 million pieces of bad content across 13 policies for Facebook and over 3 million pieces of such content across 12 policies for Instagram in India in September 2022. Out of the total incoming reports, Meta provided tools to users to resolve their issues in 987 cases. These include pre-established channels to report content for specific violations, self-remediation flows where users can download their data, avenues to address account hacked issues, etc.
