Meta tells IT ministry PM Modi's posts will get additional oversight, senior level reviews

Meta wrote to the government on Wednesday outlining the specifics of enhanced and rigorous safeguards it has now implemented for content posted by the Prime Minister and other prominent accounts, according to sources. Meta has informed the IT Ministry that posts by the Prime Minister and prominent accounts will have additional oversight on the platform and that multiple checks will take place at levels of senior company officials, sources said, citing the social media firm's communication to the ministry. Meta team is likely to meet government officials later this week or early next week over the Prime Minister's Facebook post issue, sources added.

An email sent by PTI to Meta seeking comments did not elicit a response. The government on Tuesday summoned a top Meta executive after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent post addressing India's youth and promising stringent measures against paper leaks was briefly restricted by Facebook, and although the US-headquartered social media giant blamed it on a technical glitch and apologised, the IT Ministry had found the explanation "inadequate". Prime Minister Modi's Instagram post of July 23, later shared on Facebook, marked his first direct selfie video aimed at engaging with the youth and underscoring the government's commitment to crack down on paper leaks amid students' protests, was restricted briefly by Meta on Facebook.

Following this, the global head of public policy of Meta (Facebook and Instagram) was summoned by the IT Ministry. IT Secretary S Krishnan on Tuesday said that while Meta has apologised and admitted that they have 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 had said.

Meanwhile, sources had said Meta has told the government that a glitch in its automated content filters caused the removal of Prime Minister Modi's Facebook post for a brief while. According to a Meta spokesperson, the content was removed "in error" and has since been restored on the platform. IT Ministry sources had said on Tuesday that Meta's explanation to the government, citing a technical glitch in the automated content filters, was "not reasonable", and that the matter was "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.

Meta officials, it is learnt, 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 Prime Minister. Sources had said that Meta claimed that its automated filters inadvertently ended up briefly removing the original post itself.