New Delhi: Over 2 million Indian accounts were banned by WhatsApp in the period 15 May–15 June 2021, Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp said in its latest India monthly report.
Under the new IT rules, large digital platforms (with over 5 million users) will have to publish periodic compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken thereon.
The company said these accounts were banned in the interest of “preventing online abuse and keeping users safe on our platform”.
WhatsApp said more than 95 per cent of such bans were due to the unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging (spam).
The report titled ‘India Monthly Report under the Information Technology(Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021’, said these numbers have increased significantly since 2019 as the company’s systems have increased in sophistication.
“…so we are catching more accounts even as we believe there are more attempts to send bulk or automated messages. Keep in mind, we ban the vast majority of these accounts proactively, without relying on any user reports,” the company said.
According to the IT rules, significant social media intermediaries are also required to appoint a chief compliance officer, a nodal officer and a grievance officer and these officials are required to be resident in India.
Non-compliance with the IT rules would result in these platforms losing their intermediary status that provides them immunity from liabilities over any third-party data hosted by them. In other words, they could be liable for criminal action in case of complaints.
Facebook recently named Spoorthi Priya as its grievance officer in India. India is a major market for global digital platforms. As per data cited by the government recently, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram clients, while 1.75 crore account holders are on microblogging platform Twitter.
