Banned 2.9 mn accounts in January "to combat abuse on our platform": WhatsApp - The Free Media

Banned 2.9 mn accounts in January “to combat abuse on our platform”: WhatsApp

WhatsApp, the social messaging platform, announced on Wednesday that it had banned over 2.9 million accounts in the country in January to “combat abuse.””Among end-to-end encrypted messaging services, WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said. WhatsApp has consistently invested in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technology, data scientists, and experts over the years to keep “our users safe on our platform,” according to the spokesperson.

“In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we have published our report for January 2023. This user-safety report includes information about user complaints and the actions taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive measures to combat abuse on our platform. According to the most recent monthly report, WhatsApp banned over 2.9 million accounts in January,” he continued. From January 1 to January 31, a total of 1,461 reports were collected, with 195 cases being investigated. There were 51 reports on account support, 1,337 on ban appeal, 45 cases on other support cases, and 21 on product support.

According to the company statement, WhatsApp, in addition to responding to and acting on user complaints through the grievance channel, deploys tools and resources to prevent harmful behavior on the platform. “We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is far better to prevent harmful activity from occurring in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred,” the company stated.

Abuse detection occurs at three points in an account’s life cycle: during registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback in the form of user reports and blocks.”A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time,” the company said, adding, “In a white paper, we detailed our on-platform capabilities to identify and ban accounts.”