WhatsApp Banned 2 Million Indian Accounts In October: Compliance Report

Messaging app WhatsApp banned over 2 million accounts in India, and received over 500 grievance reports in October, according to its latest compliance report.

Parent company Meta also released the compliance reports for October for Instagram and Facebook on Wednesday.

According to the reports, over 18.8 million pieces of content were 'actioned' on Facebook across 13 violation categories, while Instagram took action against 3 million photos across 12 categories during the month.

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The new IT Rules, which came into effect in May, require large digital organisations to publish monthly compliance reports, which mention the details of complaints received and actions taken.

"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. As captured in the latest monthly report, WhatsApp banned over 2 million accounts in the month of October," a WhatsApp spokesperson told the media.

The Meta-owned company had stated that more than 95 per cent of bans are due to the unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging (spam).

In October, the messaging app received 500 user reports spanning across account support (146), ban appeal (248), other support (42), product support (53), and safety (11). The report said that 18 accounts were 'actioned' by the platform under the ban appeal category, based on user reports.

Meanwhile, sibling company Facebook received 686 user reports were received in India through its grievance mechanism in India.

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Facebook actioned over 18.8 million content pieces in several categories including spam (11.3 million), violent and graphic content (3.4 million), adult nudity,sexual activity (2.3 million), and hate speech (172,400). Four other categories under which Facebook actioned content included bullying and harassment (87,000), suicide and self-injury (337,000), dangerous organisations and individuals: terrorist propaganda (55,100) and organised hate (12,300).

October's report also saw the addition of three new categorises. These are Child Endangerment - Nudity and Physical Abuse category saw 212,200 content pieces being actioned, while Child Endangerment - Sexual Exploitation saw 597,600 pieces and Violence and Incitement 317,000 pieces being actioned.