WhatsApp banned a record 4.5 million bad accounts in India in February 2023

Meta-owned social media chat platform, WhatsApp banned a staggering 4.5 million bad accounts in India in February, in compliance with India's new IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the company informed in its monthly compliance report.

According to the country's IT rules, big digital and social media platforms with more than 5 million users, are mandated to publish monthly compliance reports. It also requires that all social media platforms should have a grievance officer who would acknowledge the receipt of a complaint within 24 hours and dispose of it within 15 days.

In February 2023, WhatsApp, which is the country's most popular messaging platform with nearly 500 million users, received another record 2,804 complaint reports, and the records "actioned" were 504.

According to its compliance report, WhatsApp said that a total of "4,597,400 WhatsApp accounts were banned and 1,298,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users" between February 1 and February 28.

In a related development, the company's parent Meta also took off 28 million 'bad' posts across Facebook and Instagram in India during the same period, according to the company's transparency report in compliance with the India IT Rules 2021.

The company actioned over 24.8 million pieces of content across 13 policies for Facebook and 3.3 million pieces of content across 12 policies for Instagram.