WhatsApp update: Over 23 lakh Indian accounts banned for THIS reason

WhatsApp update: The Meta-owned Meta-owned WhatsApp has banned over 23 lakh bad accounts in India in the month of October in compliance with the new IT Rules 2021 which are being amended to put more responsibilities on social media platforms.

"Between October 1 and October 31, 23,24,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned and 8,11,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users. The messaging platform, which has more than 400 million users in the country, received 701 complaint reports in October in India, and the records 'actioned' were 34," the company said in a statement. 

"In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we've published our report for the month of October 2022. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 2.3 million accounts in the month of October," said a WhatsApp spokesperson.

Under the upgraded IT Rules 2021, major digital and social media platforms, with in excess of 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports. Meanwhile, WhatsApp has launched the 'forward media with caption' feature on iOS, which provides users the ability to forward images, videos, GIFs and documents, with a caption.

After downloading the latest WhatsApp for iOS 22.23.77 update from the App Store, some users were able to access the new feature, reports WABetaInfo. Users have to forward an image with a caption in order to know if the ability is enabled to their account and a new view will display at the bottom of the screen.

Additionally, if someone does not want to forward the caption, a dismiss button is provided to remove the caption from the image before forwarding the message. The feature will roll out to more users over the coming days, the report said. Last week, it was reported that the messaging platform was working on voice status on iOS beta for an upcoming iOS update which would provide users the ability to share voice notes to their status updates.