WhatsApp Banned Nearly 24 Lakh Indian Accounts in July: All Details

WhatsApp removed nearly 24 lakh accounts in India in July, the company stated in its monthly compliance report. The Meta-owned messaging service is an intermediary under the IT Rules, and publishes monthly reports on actions taken against accounts on the platform. According to WhatsApp, 14 lakh accounts were banned ‘proactively’, which means they were removed without receiving any reports from users. On Wednesday, Facebook and Instagram revealed that a total of 2.7 crore posts on the social media platforms were removed in July.

According to WhatsApp’s latest report titled ‘India Monthly Report under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021’ the messaging service banned over 23,87,000 accounts in India in July.

WhatsApp said that the accounts were banned based on both user reports through the company’s grievance redressal system, which is mandatory under the IT Rules, as well as its own systems to identify accounts violating its terms of service.   

It is worth noting that the company’s removal of nearly 24 lakh accounts is the highest since March, when over 18 lakh accounts were banned. The company removed 16 lakh and 19 lakh accounts in April and May, respectively. Meanwhile, 22 lakh accounts were banned in June. 

WhatsApp also has to acknowledge and address complaints from users under the grievance redressal mechanism mandated by the IT Rules. The firm says that it received 574 user reports, acting on 27 of them. 

The highest number of user reports were related to account ban appeals, and the company says that it actioned 27 of these accounts. Meanwhile, the company marked 116 reports for account support, 13 reports for safety and other reports as not actioned. 

On Wednesday, Meta revealed that it had removed over 2.7 crore posts from Facebook and Instagram in July as part of its compliance report for that month. Facebook, which is an intermediary under the IT Rules, took down 1.73 crore spam posts and 23 lakh posts for violent and graphic content, as part of its efforts to comply with the government’s regulations for social media platforms.