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17-07-2021
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ WASHINGTON: WhatsApp has said it blocked over two million accounts in India in May and June for violating rules.
The service said 95% of these users were blocked for violating the limits of the number of times messages can be forwarded in India.
The submissions were made by WhatsApp in its first monthly compliance report under India’s controversial new IT rules.
India is WhatsApp’s largest market with about 400 million users.
The Facebook-owned messaging service said its “top focus” has been to prevent accounts in India from sending harmful or unwanted messages at scale.
Using advanced machine learning technology, WhatsApp reportedly bans close to eight million accounts across the world every month.
Two million accounts in India sending a “high and abnormal rate of messages” were banned in India alone between 15 May and 15 June, the service said.
The service identifies an Indian account as one with a +91 (country code) phone number.
The Facebook-owned app often ends up being the focus of discussions on the spread of misinformation and fake news in India.
Such fake news and hoaxes are forwarded to tens of thousands of users in hours, and it’s practically impossible to counter them.
Messages and videos circulating in bulk have in the past incited mob violence in India, even leading to deaths.
In addition to responding to user complaints, WhatsApp said it deployed its own tools to prevent abuse on the platform.
It said it relied on the “behavioral signals” from user accounts, or on available “unencrypted information”, profile and group photos, and descriptions to identify potential offenders.
WhatsApp’s submissions come at a time when tech companies are embroiled in an intensifying battle with the Indian government over the new IT rules.
The guidelines – announced in February and became effective in May – seek to regulate content on social media and streaming platforms, and have raised serious concerns about free speech and user privacy.
Critics say they give the government and law enforcement agencies powers to take down a wide range of content on the internet but the government claims the rules are meant to prevent abuse and misinformation.
Earlier, US President Joe Biden has warned that the spread of Covid-19 misinformation on social media is “killing people”.
He was responding to a question from a reporter about the alleged role of “platforms like Facebook” in spreading falsehoods about vaccines and the pandemic.
The White House has been increasing pressure on social media companies to tackle disinformation.
Facebook says it is taking “aggressive action” to protect public health.
“They’re killing people,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”
US health officials have warned that the country’s current spike in Covid-19 deaths and infections is exclusively hitting unvaccinated communities.
Earlier on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Facebook and other platforms were not doing enough to combat misinformation about vaccines.
“Obviously, there are steps they have taken,” she said. “It’s clear that there are more that can be taken.”
A spokesman for Facebook, Kevin McAlister, said the company would “not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts”.
“We’ve removed more than 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation [and] removed accounts that repeatedly break these rules,” the company said in a separate statement.
Facebook has faced criticism for its moderation, and misleading content about the pandemic is still widely available on its platforms.
Earlier, on Friday Rochelle Walensky, Director of the US Public Health Body Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters: “There is a clear message that is coming through; this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
About 67.9% of US adults have received one dose of the vaccine, while 59.2% of adults are fully vaccinated.
Many eligible people refusing vaccinations in the US have said they don’t trust them.
In March, a report said anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter had reached “more than 59 million followers, making these the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers”.
That same month, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey, the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter respectively – were questioned in Congress over disinformation.
Dorsey told the senators that Twitter was committed to moderating posts. Pichai said YouTube worked to remove misleading content, and highlighted its role in relaying vaccine information.
It comes after social media platforms admitted censoring revelations about politically embarrassing emails leaked from Biden’s son’s laptop in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.
Twitter and Facebook blocked links to the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden’s dealings after the Biden team claimed without evidence that it was “disinformation”.
