Instant messaging and voice-over-IP service WhatsApp on Wednesday said the firm banned over 2.3 million accounts in the month of October, according to a spokesperson of WhatsApp. In another statement, it said as many as 811,000 of these 2.3 million accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users.
A WhatsApp's spokesperson in a statement said, "WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform." The spokesperson said, "In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we've published our report for the month of October 2022. This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp's own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform." As captured in the latest monthly report, WhatsApp banned over 2.3 million accounts in the month of October, according to the spokesperson.
Accounts banned in September
In a statement released by the firm, 2,685,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned from the instant messaging service between September 1 and 30 this year. As many as 872,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users.
Tools and resources to prevent harmful behaviour
According to the firm's statement, in addition to responding to and taking action on user complaints through the grievance channel, WhatsApp also deployed tools and resources to prevent harmful behaviour on the platform. It said, "We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred." It said the abuse detection operates at three stages of an account's lifestyle: At registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback, which we receive in the form of user reports and blocks.
The statement from WhatsApp said a team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time.
