New Delhi: Social media giant Meta is learnt to have told a parliamentary committee on Monday that it is ready to apologise for the brief restriction on a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Facebook, as a section of members demanded legal action and sought fixing of accountability.
At a meeting of the department-related standing committee on information technology, members pointed out that while Meta earns substantial revenue from India, it does not comply with the law of the land, according to sources.
“Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg must apologise for deleting the video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” Nishikant Dubey said, adding if he doesn’t, Meta may no longer have a “safe harbour” in several cases. The safe harbour clause in India’s law shields online platforms and ISPs from liability for third-party content they host, as long as they practice due diligence.
“Their mindset is to destabilise the country. The video of the prime minister can be taken down easily, which they themselves admitted that it was taken down for five hours. From 12.30 am to 5 am, the content was missing. So this is a very serious matter,” Dubey said.
“Why was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video removed? Who is responsible for this? Who removed the video from the platform at a time when Facebook had not removed a great deal of other objectionable content? Who bears the ultimate responsibility for this?” a BJP MP asked, according to government sources.
The questioning came against the backdrop of the government’s summons to Meta’s top executives after Prime Minister Modi’s recent Facebook post addressing India’s youth and promising stringent action against paper leaks was briefly restricted on the platform.
While the US-headquartered social media giant had attributed the incident to a technical glitch and apologised, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had found the explanation “inadequate”. The company had said that the content was removed “in error” and was restored on the platform.
In a democracy, “if a video of the prime minister is not safe, then accountability needs to be fixed, another panel member was quoted as saying at the meeting on Monday.
They also grilled Meta officials who appeared before the panel over the issue of algorithmic bias, saying objectionable content like porn is freely available on the platform while “genuine” content was removed.
In February 2024, Zuckerberg had apologised to families at a US Senate hearing about the impact that social media had on children. Under prodding from a Republican senator, Zuckerberg stood up and addressed families who held up pictures of their children who they said had been harmed by social media.
He was also shown a video in which children spoke about being bullied on social media platforms. Some recounted stories of young people taking their own lives after being extorted for money after sharing photos with sexual predators.
The members also questioned the capabilities of the algorithms designed to check deepfakes of PM Modi.
According to the sources, Meta officials expressed regret over the incident before the panel and stated they were ready to apologise.
However, a BJP MP remarked that this isn’t just about offering an apology. Accountability must be fixed and legal action should be taken in this matter, the member asserted.
MeitY had last week summoned Meta’s global team on issues linked to algorithmic bias, the platform’s algorithmic processes and their role in public order. Meta attributed the video matter to a technical glitch, but MeitY found the explanation “inadequate”, sources said.
The Hyderabad cyber crime police have filed cases against Meta India head Arun Srinivas and some accounts on Facebook and Instagram over allegedly morphed and AI posts targeting PM Modi.
