Meta-owned WhatsApp on Tuesday said it banned over 26 lakh accounts in India in the month of September in compliance with new IT regulations, 2021, which are now being amended to give more responsibilities to the social media platform. Used to be. The messaging platform, which has about 500 million users in the country (according to third-party data), received 666 complaint reports in September in India, and the “action” record was 23.
“As per IT Rules 2021, we have published our report for the month of September 2022. This user-safety report contains details of user complaints and related action taken by WhatsApp as well as WhatsApp’s own remedial “Action to combat abuse on our platform,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
The platform banned over 23 lakh bad accounts in India in August. Under the Advanced IT Rules 2021, major digital and social media platforms, which have more than five million users, are required to publish monthly compliance reports.
Meanwhile, in a major push towards an open, secure, reliable and accountable internet, the Ministry of Electronics and IT has notified certain amendments aimed at protecting the rights of “digital citizens”.
Currently, social media moderators are only required to inform users not to upload certain categories of harmful/illegal content. The amendments impose a legal obligation on moderators to make reasonable efforts to prevent users from uploading such content. Union Minister Rajiv Chandrashekhar said that it is necessary to protect the constitutional rights of Indian citizens. The amendments were notified after the ministry followed a detailed public consultation process involving all stakeholders.
The new provisions will ensure that the arbitrator’s obligation is not a mere formality.