Meta-Owned WhatsApp Bans More Than 70 Lakh Bad Accounts In India In July

WhatsApp has over 500 million users in India and the platform got another record 11,067 complaint reports in the month of July.

Meta-owned WhatsApp has taken down more than 70 lakh bad accounts in the country, in compliance with India's IT Rules 2021, the company has said. The world's most popular instant messaging platform banned over 72 lakh bad accounts in India in July. The messaging platform, which has over 500 million users in India, got another record 11,067 complaint reports in the month of July in the country and the records actioned were 72. Meta-owned WhatsApp noted in its monthly compliance report: "Between July 1-31, 72,28,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned. 31,08,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users."

"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," said the company. 

"Accounts Actioned" denotes reports where WhatsApp took remedial action based on the report and taking action denotes either banning an account or a previously banned account being restored as a result. 

According to the platform, the orders received from the Grievance Appellate Committee between July 1 and July 31 were five and orders complied with were also five. In an attempt to empower millions of Indian social media users, the Centre recently launched the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) which looks into their concerns regarding content and other issues. The setting up of the panel is aimed at strengthening the country's digital laws, and will look into appeals by users against decisions of social media platforms.