WhatsApp publishes its first transparency report, published under the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. According to the report, they have banned over 20 lakh accounts between May 15 and June 15, 2021. Moreover, it claims that banning user accounts is to prevent harmful and spamming behavior. In addition, it also adds that India alone accounts for 25% of all the accounts banned in the world.
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According to the company, it has banned 20,11,000 accounts in this one-month period. The messaging platform identifies Indian WhatsApp accounts through the +91 country code of the mobile number used to register. In addition, the report claims that over 95% of accounts are due to the unauthorized use of automated or bulk messaging. For better understanding, this is what we call “spamming“.
WhatsApp bans 2mn user accounts mostly for spamming
On Thursday, WhatsApp intermediary report highlights its own actions to prevent harmful behavior. The report also mentions receiving a total of 70 reports for account support, 204 for ban appeals (of which it took action on 63), 20 for other support, 43 for product support, and 8 for “safety issues”. Ultimately, over 95% of these accounts got banned automatically. Mostly after the service detected “automated bulk messaging”, or spam.
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Additionally, the report also mentions that the number of accounts banned has gone up significantly since 2019. WhatsApp claims it is because “our 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”. In addition, it also claims that the global average is about 8 million accounts ban per month.
“We respond to all grievances received except in cases where a grievance is a duplicate of the previous ticket. An account gets action if an account is banned or a previously banned account is restored as a result of the complaint. In addition,WhatsApp also deploys tools and resources to prevent harmful behavior on the platform. We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred”.
WhatsApp adds in its report
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In addition, WhatsApp also gives a rough timeline on how frequently it will publish such intermediary guidelines reports. “We expect to publish subsequent editions of the report 30-45 days after the reporting period to allow sufficient time for data collection and validation,” it said.
Akhil Kapoor
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