New Delhi: Meta-owned WhatsApp said on Wednesday that it had blocked more than 37 ‘bad’ accounts in India in November in compliance with new IT rules 2021, which are being amended to place more responsibilities on social media platforms.
Between November 1 and November 31, 3,716,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned and 990,000 of those accounts were preemptively banned prior to any reports from users, the company said.
The messaging platform, which has more than 400 million users in the country, received 946 complaints reports in November in the country, and the number of “made” records reached 74.
According to a WhatsApp spokesperson, “In accordance with the IT rules of 2021, we have published our report for the month of November 2022. As captured in the latest monthly report, WhatsApp banned more than 3.7 million accounts in the month of November.”
Under the updated 2021 IT rules, major digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, are required to publish monthly compliance reports.
Meanwhile, in a major step towards an open, secure, reliable and accountable Internet, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has notified of some amendments aimed at protecting the rights of “digital Nagriks”.
The amendments place a legal obligation on moderators to use reasonable efforts to prevent users from uploading such content.