In compliance with the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, WhatsApp published its first intermediary guidelines report on Thursday. Between May 15 and June 15, 2021, the Facebook-owned messaging app, WhatsApp, banned over 29 lakh accounts. Over 95 percent of such account bans are caused by unauthorized use of automated or bulk messaging. This can be classified as spam. According to WhatsApp, about 8 million global accounts are disabled or banned each month.
Also, the messaging app revealed the breakdown of grievances it received from various parties from May 15 to June 15, 2021. According to the first intermediary guidelines report, the messaging app received 70 requests for account support and 204 ban appeals, of which 63 accounts were banned. Facebook’s parent company released its first monthly report under new IT rules.
‘In general, we respond to all grievances received, except when a grievance is deemed to be a duplicate of an earlier ticket. As a result of the complaint, an account is banned or a previously banned account is restored. In addition to responding to and addressing grievances through the grievance channel, WhatsApp also deploys tools and resources to prevent harmful behavior on the platform. We focus on prevention because we believe it is far better to prevent harmful activity than to detect it after harm has occurred,’ WhatsApp said in its report.
Moreover, the company explains how it tackles abuse detection ‘at three stages of an account’s life cycle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback. An analyst team augments these systems in order to evaluate edge cases and improve our efficiency over time’.
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The messaging app clarifies that the banned accounts include Indian numbers, which it identifies by a +91 phone number. It has also provided a rough timeline on how frequently it will publish such intermediary guidelines reports. ‘We plan to publish subsequent editions of the report thirty to forty-five days after the reporting period to allow enough time for data collection and validation,’ it said.
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