WhatsApp banned more than 100,000 user accounts in Brazil, as parent company Facebook is taking a step further in curbing hate speech, abuse and misinformation ahead of an election in the nation.
Facebook indicated that deleting malicious messages/fake news on its main social networking platform is easier than doing so on WhatsApp, since the latter encrypted and nearly impossible to monitor.
According to a Bloomberg report, a WhatsApp spokesperson wrote in an email, “We have cutting-edge technology to detect spam that identifies accounts with abnormal behavior so that they can’t be used to spread spam or misinformation," and added, "We are also taking immediate legal measures to prevent companies from sending mass messages via WhatsApp and have already banned accounts associated with those companies."