WhatsApp teams wanted to show for the occasion that they take the issue of fake accounts and false information very seriously. They announced that they delete an average of 2 million dubious accounts each month.
Automated shipments
Since messages exchanged on the overseas chinese in canada data application are end-to-end encrypted, WhatsApp is unable to know their content and identify problematic messages (spam, calls for violence, etc.). It must therefore attack the accounts as such, by identifying those that do not respect its rules of use based on their activities (number of messages sent, sending rates, telephone number used to create the account, etc.).
To detect problematic accounts, WhatsApp explained that it had created a computer program capable of detecting the sending of mass messages or the creation of multiple accounts. Accounts that send a large number of messages as soon as they are created, or those whose status on WhatsApp never indicates that it is "Writing" are also considered suspicious, because they are very likely to be automated.
WhatsApp claims that of the 2 million accounts deleted each month, 20% are deleted at the time of their creation, and 75% are automated accounts. Some people, using WhatsApp to "spam" its users, particularly with misleading messages, use software that allows them to manage several accounts at once from the same computer, and to automate the distribution of messages. Then, the messages spread "organically": often sensational, these messages are rebroadcast by some of the people who receive them, without realizing that they are part of a disinformation campaign.
