The complaints were received via the grievance mechanisms and accounts were actioned through its prevention and detection methods for violating the laws of the land or its terms of service…reports Asian Lite News
Meta-owned WhatsApp banned more than 22 lakh bad accounts in India in the month of June in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, the company said on Tuesday.
The platform had banned over 19 lakh bad accounts in the country in May.
The messaging platform also received 632 grievance reports in June within the country, and the accounts “actioned” were 64.
In May, WhatsApp received 528 grievance reports and the accounts “actioned” were 24.
“WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Published in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the report contained information on actions taken by WhatsApp in response to grievances received from users in India.
The complaints were received via the grievance mechanisms and accounts were actioned through its prevention and detection methods for violating the laws of the land or its terms of service.
‘Accounts Actioned’ denotes reports where WhatsApp took remedial action based on the report.
Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.
Calls to relax IT rules
An industry group called Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) representing US-based Big Tech firms have urged India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to make changes in the proposed amendments to the country’s new IT Rules, 2021 which would “negate the government’s commitment to ease of doing business”.
In a letter to the IT Ministry, the coalition that represents Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Spotify, among others, said that the proposed changes in the new IT Rules 2021 would affect continuity in business operations for all intermediaries that have made significant investments in the country in regard to technology, workforce, and other resources.
The coalition said that intermediaries, as conceived under Section 79 of the IT Act, only provide a technology platform or a computer resource as a service to the user.
“It is ultimately the user who determines the nature of content to be communicated or transmitted on the platforms/computer resources operated by the intermediaries. Given this, it may be more beneficial to impose mandates prohibiting the dissemination of certain types of content on the user itself,” it argued.
