India Bans Over 74 Lakh WhatsApp Accounts – Reason Revealed

Meta-owned popular instant messaging app WhatsApp has banned more than 7.4 million “bad” accounts in India under the new 2021 IT rules.

According to the report, the messaging platform banned at least 7,420,748 accounts in the country between 1 and 31. August. About 3,506,905 of these accounts were proactively banned before users failed to report.

The Meta-owned app also received a record 14,767 complaints in its monthly compliance report in August in India, with 71 records of “actions”.

“Accounts Actioned” means reports where WhatsApp took corrective action based on the report, and taking action means either banning the account or reinstating a previously banned account as a result.

“This user safety report includes information on user complaints received and the corresponding actions taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive measures to combat abuse on our platform,” according to the company.

In addition, the company received only one mandate from the country’s appeals board in August and complied with it. The Center recently established a Grievance Committee (GAC) to address user concerns about content and related issues. The aim of this panel is to strengthen digital regulations and deal with user complaints about decisions made by social media platforms.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is rolling out a new reply bar feature to quickly reply to images, videos and GIFs, as reported by WABetaInfo. According to the release, the new reply bar feature will become available when viewing images or videos in a chat after users install the latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.20.20 update from the Google Play Store.

The new reply bar allows users to quickly reply to specific media in chat without closing the current screen, making the conversation flow easier and without losing the context of the shared content. To check if you got the feature, open WhatsApp and then open any image, video or GIF.