Aug 5 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms’ Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan apologised to India’s information technology minister for briefly restricting a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July, he said in a statement on Wednesday.
“I apologised to the minister on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi’s post,” Kaplan said.
Last month, India’s information and technology ministry summoned Meta executives after Facebook briefly restricted a post by Modi. Meta said the post had been blocked inadvertently because of an operational error.
Police in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad also registered a case against Meta India head Arun Srinivas over videos posted on Facebook that allegedly depicted Modi in an “abusive manner”, Reuters reported last week, citing a senior police officer.
TENSIONS BETWEEN META AND GOVERNMENT
The videos spread as Modi contended with the biggest wave of youth-led protests India has seen in more than a decade. The protests were over leaked papers in national examinations that led to the resignation of his education minister.
The incidents are part of a recent run of tensions between Meta and Modi’s government over content related to the prime minister. Modi has faced a barrage of online criticism, jokes and ridicule from protesters in recent weeks.
Separately, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised to the Indian government over child sexual abuse material, deepfake content and other operational lapses on the company’s platforms, local media reported earlier in the day.
ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY
Zuckerberg apologised during a meeting between Meta executives and Indian government officials, financial news publication Moneycontrol and other local outlets reported.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In July, the Indian government ordered Meta to remove adverts and content promoting child sexual abuse material on Instagram, the BBC reported, citing a senior Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology official.
Meta said at the time it had a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse material and was continuing to strengthen its detection systems, according to the BBC.
(Reporting by Shanima Aniyeri, Hritam Mukherjee, Surbhi Misra and Nishit Navin; Editing by Mark Potter and David Holmes)
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