In March 2023, social media giants WhatsApp meted out tough justice to its users as the platform banned an unprecedented 4.7 million accounts. For the context, WhatsApp had also banned more than 4.5 million accounts in February, 2.9 million in January, 3.6 million in December and 3.7 million in November.
To ensure further action against users joined in malicious or offensive behavior, the Indian government launched the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC). The GAC is a thoughtfully designed online dispute resolution mechanism, which allows users to appeal against decisions taken by various social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Twitter.
For the month of March, WhatsApp revealed that it had complied with all three orders issued by the GAC to ban accounts. The Meta-owned platform also shared that 1,659,385 of the accounts were proactively blocked ahead of any related report from the users.
WhatsApp has continued to remain physically involved with the safety measures, as demonstrated by the monthly user-safety report. All the complaints received by the platform were reviewed for further action, along with the preventive measures the platform enforced to combat abuse. In cases of duplicate tickets, the grievance is not considered, and only when an account is blocked or restored, that it is marked as ‘actioned’.
Meta, the company behind WhatsApp, recently sought the help of Microsoft and OpenAI for AI coding assistant for its engineering team. The real-time collaboration, AI coding assistant and meta sharing of code enable faster and easier developing practices.
It is believed the company has taken these steps to discourage offensive behavior on the platform. WhatsApp’s commitment to safety is an ongoing process and with the inclusion of GAC, it is ensured that any grievances are addressed in an impartial way.
