16.8 Million WhatsApp And Facebook Accounts Deleted — Meta’s Big Purge
Last month, on July 18, I reported how Meta had confirmed that not only had 10 million Facebook accounts been deleted, but that the massive account purge would continue. Now, WhatsApp users are starting to understand the implications of this, as Meta has confirmed the deletion of some 6.8 million messaging accounts.
Billions of people use the combination of Facebook and WhatsApp for their social media and encrypted messaging needs. Millions, however, have had their accounts deleted. On the whole, this is a good thing. How so? The reasoning behind the account deletions is to improve security and safety for everyone who uses either platform.
The August 5 Meta announcement confirmed that it is the scammers, not the innocent users, that have prompted the deletion of more than 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts. “Based on our investigative insights into the latest enforcement efforts,” Meta said, “we proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centers were able to operationalize them.”
A typical example, Meta said, involved a criminal scam center in Cambodia that used ChatGPT to generate convincing text messages that linked to a WhatsApp chat before moving the victim to a Telegram group. This scam involved liking TikTok videos, supposedly in return for payment, but those payments required an initial deposit of cryptocurrency before they could commence.
As well as deleting accounts by the million, WhatsApp has said it is rolling out new anti-scam protections, including a safety overview when you are added to a WhatsApp group by someone not in your contacts, and also alerts when invited to individual chats with someone not in your contacts. “WhatsApp taking down 6.8 million accounts should be applauded,” Paul Bischoff, a consumer privacy advocate at Comparitech, said, “but as with any statistic from Meta, we don't really know the full scope of the problem.”
Indeed, is 6.8 million really that huge a number for a service with three billion active users? “Did Meta ban half of the scammers on WhatsApp or just a tenth of them?” Bischoff asked, before answering with “no one knows, probably not even Meta.”
And then, of course, there is the groundswell of users who have taken to platforms such as Reddit and TikTok to complain that their accounts have been suspended or deleted without cause. “Search meta ban wave on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok,” one reader emailed me, “Meta's AI has banned thousands of legitimate accounts without valid reason, and Meta refuses to acknowledge the error.”
A Meta spokesperson said, "We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we've made a mistake.” Meanwhile, I would argue that not only is WhatsApp doing the right thing in deleting proven scam accounts, it is doing what needs to be done. If innocent parties are getting caught up in this, as seems likely, then Meta also needs to be taking this more seriously than it would apparently seem to be doing.