For those unaware, WhatsApp started publishing monthly User Safety Reports to comply with India’s IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, earlier this year. In the report, WhatsApp details how many user grievances it receives and how many accounts it bans in India during a certain period.
So, as per the recent report for the month of October, WhatsApp received 500 grievances from users, out of which 146 related to account support, 248 for ban appeals, 11 for safety, 53 for product support, and 11 for other support queries. Although most of the grievance reports were shrugged off by the company, 18 were actually banned.
Other than this, WhatsApp reports that it has banned over 2 million (20 lakhs) accounts in India with the help of its automated system, which is operated by a team of analysts.
The automated tools for abuse detection work at three stages of an account life cycle – at registration, during a chat session, and when the platform receives any negative feedback about an account from other users. Moreover, the system detects other anomalies of an account, like whether it is being used via a modded WhatsApp version or not, which could lead to a ban.
So, are you on the list of 20,69,000 users in India whose WhatsApp accounts were banned in October? Well, if you are and your WhatsApp account is currently banned, you would be happy to hear that soon you will be able to request an account ban review right from WhatsApp. Although the feature has not yet been rolled out for the public, we expect it to be available sooner rather than later. For now, you can send an email to wa@support.whatsapp.com to submit an account-ban review request.
