India summons Meta over temporary block on Modi’s Facebook post

MUMBAI: India has summoned senior Meta executives to explain why a Facebook post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly restricted last week, a top government official said on Thursday.

The post in question, a video message Modi shared on Instagram before it was cross-posted to Facebook, was temporarily blocked on the latter platform. A Meta spokesperson said at the time that the restriction had been the result of an inadvertent error.

“We have asked Meta to come in at the highest level and explain what is happening,” S. Krishnan, secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said, without specifying which executives had been asked to appear.

Krishnan said Meta had informed Indian authorities that it had introduced new protocols governing accounts belonging to prominent public figures in order to prevent a similar incident from happening again. Meta India did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Modi’s video, posted on July 23, was his first public response to the wave of student protests that led to the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the weekend. The video has since drawn more than 404 million views on Instagram.

With India being Facebook’s biggest market by users, this sparring with Meta is the latest example of Modi’s government taking on Big Tech over content-related issues.