Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Monday came out in support of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the social media giant indicated it was willing to apologise to a parliamentary panel over the brief restriction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Facebook post, saying the company should not be “bullied” into apologising.
In a post on X, Moitra alleged that the government routinely pressures social media platforms to remove content critical of it and downplayed the temporary restriction on the Prime Minister’s post.
“Hello Mark please do not get bullied & apologise to anyone. Indian govt blackmails & threatens citizens all the time, gets content critical of it removed at will. One video mistakenly removed for few hours didn’t make heavens fall!” she wrote in a post on X.
Her remarks came after Meta representatives appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, where members questioned the company over the incident and its content moderation practices.
According to a news agency PTI report, Meta officials told the panel they were prepared to apologise for the brief restriction on PM Modi’s Facebook post, which had been removed in error and later restored.
The company had earlier attributed the incident to a technical glitch, but the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) reportedly termed the explanation “inadequate”.
During the meeting, committee members raised concerns over Meta’s content moderation policies, questioning why the PM’s post was removed while objectionable content, including pornography, continued to remain accessible on the platform. Members also sought to know who was ultimately responsible for the removal and whether accountability would be fixed.
According to sources, a BJP MP argued that an apology alone would not suffice and called for legal action against the company. Another member reportedly said that in a democracy, “if a video of the prime minister is not safe, then accountability needs to be fixed.”
The panel also questioned Meta officials about algorithmic bias and the effectiveness of its systems in detecting deepfakes involving Prime Minister Modi.
The meeting, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, was convened to discuss the regulation of social and digital media platforms. It was attended by Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, MeitY Secretary S Krishnan and representatives from Meta, Google, X, YouTube and Snapchat.
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