A selfie post in which the prime minister addressed the nation’s youth was briefly removed, leading to a backlash
India has reportedly summoned a top Meta official over the company’s removal of a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the country’s youth, which sparked an angry backlash against the social media giant.
The global head of public policy of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has been summoned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology over the issue, reports citing sources said.
The selfie video by the Indian prime minister was posted on July 23 amid student protests organized by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) over leaked national entrance exam questions. The video was Modi’s first outreach to the country’s youth, who had been demanding the resignation of the education minister, promising stringent measures against paper leaks.
The issue gained attention after an X post by an activist from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, who noticed that the video had been removed on Facebook in the early hours of Tuesday. Users trying to access the video got the message that it was not available in India due to a “legal request,” leading to a swift online backlash.
The platform restored the video soon afterwards, but the block prompted the Indian government to summon the Meta official for an explanation, according to media reports.
Meta Took Down PM Modi’s Video. Then Called It “An Error”.
According to Moneycontrol, Meta ‘mistakenly’ restricted access to a Facebook video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to Gen Z before restoring it hours later.
“The content was removed in error and has since been restored,” Meta was quoted by news agency ANI as saying.
Meta’s explanation for the removal of Modi’s post was “not reasonable” and deeper discussions were needed on the matter, PTI reported government sources as saying. The “issue is far from settled,” they told the agency.
The combined userbase of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in India is more than 1 billion, making it a top market for Meta.
The video post was the first acknowledgement by the prime minister of the concerns of students and parents over the paper leak, which allegedly drove dozens of students to commit suicide.
The student protests were called off after Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday.
The development follows another high-profile case in which social media companies are facing legal suits over defamatory content. On Monday, a court allowed the federal transport minister to proceed with legal action against Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, X, Google, and the unidentified entities or pages being used to spread ‘defamatory’ content.
A parliamentary panel has also summoned representatives of Meta, X, Google and Snapchat to appear before it on August 3 to discuss user privacy and public order.
Earlier this month, India had raised concerns over the roll-out of usernames by messaging app WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, calling it a potential cybersecurity risk. WhatsApp is the top messaging platform in the country of 1.4 billion, with more than 500 million users.
