India Threatens Meta With Safe Harbour Loss Over PM Video

The Indian government and a parliamentary panel have threatened to revoke the safe harbour legal protections of Meta Platforms Inc. under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act. This escalation follows the temporary removal of a Facebook video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 23, which addressed student protests over NEET-UG examination paper leaks. While Meta attributed the removal to an algorithmic technical error, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and a parliamentary committee rejected the explanation as inadequate.

Throughout August 3 and 4, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, led by MP Nishikant Dubey, grilled Meta executives over algorithmic bias, the spread of deepfakes, and the presence of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in paid Instagram advertisements. Dubey issued a three-day ultimatum for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to personally apologize, arguing that Meta acts as a publisher rather than a neutral intermediary. On August 5, Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan met with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and IT Secretary S. Krishnan in New Delhi. During these meetings, Meta apologized for operational errors and admitted that payments were used to boost specific content on its platforms.

Government officials informed Meta that its active algorithmic curation may disqualify it from being a neutral intermediary, exposing the company to greater legal liability. Concurrently, the Bombay High Court ordered Meta and Google to remove abusive AI-generated content targeting Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, while the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights launched an inquiry into CSAM ads on Instagram.