Here's why WhatsApp bans over 1.8 million accounts in India in January

Meta-owned popular instant messaging platform WhatsApp recently announced that it has banned 1,858,000 bad accounts in India in the month of January in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021. The company said that it also received 495 grievance reports in the same month from the country and took action on 24 of those in January.

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"In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we've published our eighth monthly report for the month of January 2022. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 1.8 million accounts in the month of January," a WhatsApp spokesperson was quoted as saying by IANS.

The company said that data shared highlights the number of Indian accounts banned by WhatsApp between January 1 to January 31 using the abuse detection approach, which also includes action taken in furtherance to negative feedback received from users via its "Report" feature.

"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," the company said.

Meta (formerly Facebook) also took down over 11.6 million pieces of content across 13 policies for Facebook and over 3.2 million pieces of content across 12 policies for Instagram in the month of January. Under the new IT rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms -- with more than 5 million users -- have to publish monthly compliance reports.

In related news, WhatsApp launched a dedicated 'Safety in India' resource hub highlighting a host of safety measures to help people stay safe online. The launch of the resource hub comes after WhatsApp's week-long campaign, #TakeCharge to promote the safe use of the Internet.