Over 71 Lakh WhatsApp Accounts In India Were Banned In September: Here's Why

The Meta-owned popular instant messaging application WhatsApp took action against over 71 lakh bad accounts in India, in compliance with the new IT Rules of 2021.

According to the report, the messaging platform banned at least 71,11,000 accounts accounts in the country between September 1-30. About 25,71,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users.

India, with its massive user base of over 500 million people on the platform, also saw a remarkable 10,442 complaint reports in September, and WhatsApp addressed 85 per cent of these reports.

“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.

“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,” according to the company.

The Meta-owned app received only six orders from the Grievance Appellate Committee in the country in September and complied with it. The Centre recently established the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) to address user concerns about content and related matters. This panel aims to bolster digital regulations and handle user appeals against social media platforms’ decisions.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out a new feature, which will allow users to archive community group chats. There is a new action called “archive chat” within the community group chat menu. With this option, users have control over their community group chats since it’s now possible to archive them.

This feature is especially useful for those community members who are in several community group chats and want to keep their chat list cleaner and more organised.

The report suggested that this feature is very beneficial as it was no longer possible to archive community group chats after installing the update that brought improved community navigation among such group chats, making the user experience definitely worse.