Meta Apologizes Over Modi Post as India Widens Scrutiny
Indian officials raised questions over Meta’s safe-harbor protection amid scrutiny of a wrongly restricted Modi post and alleged child-abuse material on its platforms.
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Meta apologized to the Indian government after Facebook mistakenly restricted a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as officials widened their scrutiny of the company’s content-moderation and child-safety systems.
“I apologised to the minister on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi’s post,” Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement reported by Reuters and Moneycontrol on Wednesday, 5 August.
Kaplan was referring to information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
A senior Meta delegation led by Kaplan met officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, including secretary S. Krishnan, after the government summoned the company’s global leadership to explain the restriction.
Facebook had briefly restricted a video shared from Modi’s official account in July.
Meta said the action was inadvertent and caused by an operational error. The company later restored the post and told Indian authorities it had introduced additional safeguards for accounts belonging to prominent people.
Separately, Moneycontrol reported, citing unidentified people, that Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had conveyed regret to the government over child sexual abuse material, deepfake content and operational lapses on the company’s platforms.
Meta did not publicly confirm that broader apology.
Moneycontrol also reported, citing people aware of the developments, that officials challenged Meta’s description of itself as a passive intermediary. They argued that the company’s ranking and recommendation systems help determine which posts are distributed to users and how widely they are seen.
The officials said this raised questions about whether Meta should continue to receive safe-harbor protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, according to the report.
Section 79 generally shields an intermediary from liability for material posted by users if its role is limited and it observes the due-diligence requirements prescribed by the government.
The protection may not apply if the company participates in unlawful conduct or fails to remove material after receiving legally valid notice.
India tightened parts of that framework in February. Intermediaries must now remove or disable access to specified unlawful material within three hours of receiving an order or notice from an authorized government body, compared with 36 hours previously.
Meta is also facing an inquiry by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights over alleged advertisements linked to child sexual exploitative and abuse material on its platforms.
The commission issued Meta a notice on July 3 after taking notice of a BBC Eye investigation. It decided to open a formal inquiry after examining the company’s response, according to information shared by the commission and reported by Moneycontrol.
The inquiry will examine the alleged advertisements, Meta’s moderation controls and the steps it takes to detect and prevent the promotion of child-abuse material, the report said.
The Indian government had separately ordered Meta in July to remove advertisements and other content promoting child sexual abuse material on Instagram. Meta said it had a zero-tolerance policy and was strengthening its detection systems.
