WABA Platform Policy Enforcement

Before anything else, ensure your team has read and understood the Commerce and Business Policies and review this article that answers Frequently Asked Questions about these policies.

If your account has been flagged for any reason, you need to adjust and optimize the behavior on the platform quickly. Review the templates and how your agents are generally using WhatsApp Business API. 

How it Works

The WhatsApp Business account will get warned about the violated policy. Suppose it is repeated and high-risk, such as adult content, sale of alcohol and tobacco, drugs, gambling, and unsafe supplements. In that case, it may get message restrictions that gradually increase in duration, like:

• 1 or 3-day block on sending business-initiated messages and adding phone numbers to the account.
• 5 or 7-day block on sending business-initiated messages, responding to customer-initiated messages, and adding additional phone numbers to the account.
• Eventually, it will be permanently disabled from the WhatsApp Business Platform if the business does not make changes after multiple warnings and feature limits.

When there is evidence of a severe policy violation, such as child exploitation, terrorism, or the sale of illegal drugs, WhatsApp immediately disables the Business account from the Business Platform.

All violations can be appealed within 90 days of being received.
 

Understanding Violations

When a business account violates the policy, details can be found in the Account Quality section of Business Manager. To see violations:

1. Log in to Business Manager. (If you've transitioned to Meta Business Suite, follow the steps here to switch to Business Manager.)
2. Click More → Account Quality → Facebook Business Accounts.
3. In the WhatsApp Accounts section, click the WhatsApp Business Account that shows Account Issues in its Status column:

  4. For any individual issue, click See Details to view the policy that was violated and how to avoid this type of violation in the future:

Violation updates include the following information:

• Summary of policy violated and link to the policy itself.
• Examples of which content is allowed or disallowed based on that policy.
• Whether there are any active restrictions on the account, and what happens if the violation happens again.
• How to avoid future policy violations and links to helpful resources.
• How to appeal.

Notifications about violations are also:

• Surfaced in the Business Manager Notifications Center and as a banner in WhatsApp Manager.
• Sent as an email to all admins set in Business Manager.
   

Enforcement Actions

An account can become restricted or disabled depending on the number and severity of the issues. Specific restrictions can be viewed in Account Quality, along with information on the next steps and requesting a review for a particular policy issue.

Restricted or disabled accounts can still appeal issues. If issues are reversed following the appeal, the account returns to its previous status.

Appeals

If a business believes it complies with WhatsApp policies, it can appeal the violation by requesting a review. When a business appeals to a violation, the WhatsApp team reviews the case against the violation appealed to decide if the violation needs to be reconsidered. This review may result in WhatsApp reversing the violation.

This is how you request a decision review:

1. From the Account Quality page, click on the relevant WhatsApp Business Account.
2. Choose from the list of violations and click Request Review.
3. A new dialog opens in Business Manager. Enter supporting details and click Submit.
4. After submission, the request and the issue are moved to the In Review tab.
5. The appeal review decision will be sent via Business Manager and typically takes 24 to 48 hours. The appealed violation will either remain Unchanged or be set as Reversed.