IT ministry summons Meta after PM Modi’s post removed

NEW DELHI, JUL 28 (PTI): The government on Tuesday summoned Meta’s public policy head after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s post of July 23 – addressing India’s youth and promising stringent measures against paper leaks – was briefly restricted by the US-headquartered social media giant.
IT Secretary S Krishnan said that while Meta has apologised and admitted they made a mistake, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity) is not happy with the explanation given and is seeking more details from the company.
“It is good that they have apologised and admitted what they did was a mistake. But we are not happy with the explanation…it is not adequate and we are seeking more details,” Krishnan said.
Meanwhile, sources told PTI that Meta informed the government that a glitch in its automated content filters caused PM Modi’s Facebook post removal for a brief while. Sources added that Meta has also offered to ringfence high-profile accounts to avoid a repeat.
According to Meta, the content was removed “in error” and has since been restored on the platform.
A screenshot of the restricted post circulating on social media, however, says that the content wasn’t “available in your region due to a legal request”.
Sources said Meta’s explanation to the government citing a technical glitch in the automated content filters, is “not reasonable”, and that the matter is “not settled and done”. They further said that if indeed a glitch in the automated system caused the error, then Meta, being a technology company, must hasten to improve its tools.
Another source privy to the development said that the global head of public policy of Meta (Facebook and Instagram) has been summoned by the IT Ministry over the issue.
Sources said Meta officials attributed the error to AI-powered automated content filters that were reviewing shared posts and subsequent content that circulated following the original post by the PM; sources further said that Meta claimed its automated filters inadvertently ended up briefly removing the original post itself.