In the past month WhatsApp has blocked two million user accounts in India. This is done to prevent the sending of spam messages that contain fake news.
The instant messaging app says from May 15 to June 15 Facebook has blocked more than 95% of the two million WhatsApp app user accounts in India. This account was blocked for sending automated bulk messages or spam.
"These numbers have increased significantly since 2019 as our system has increased in sophistication. Keep in mind, we are proactively banning most of these accounts, regardless of user reports," WhatsApp said.
Earlier in 2018 WhatsApp had limited the ability to forward orders. This is WhatsApp’s effort to reduce cases of chaos and violence in India due to fake news. At the time WhatsApp was blocking an average of 8 million accounts per month worldwide.
With two billion users worldwide, in India WhatsApp has over 400 million users where India is also one of the largest WhatsApp markets.
The report was also submitted by WhatsApp as a form of compliance under new rules that took effect last May.
Citing CNN news, the previous Indian government had instructed all social media companies including WhatsApp to publish monthly compliance reports.
They were also asked to provide detailed explanations on complaints received from Indian consumers and actions taken.
Under the directive, international technology companies must also hire local executives, who can help organize content and take immediate action in response to legal complaints.
In return, WhatsApp sued the Indian government for a number of things in the new digital rules, one of which contained that the Indian government asked WhatsApp to trace the origin of the discussions.
In a statement, a WhatsApp spokesperson said that doing so would break the encryption from end to end and essentially damage people’s privacy rights.
“Requiring a messaging app to‘ track ’chats is tantamount to asking us to keep fingerprints from every message sent on WhatsApp, which would break the encryption from end to end and would essentially damage people’s privacy rights,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
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