Meta apologises to Vaishnaw over erroneous takedown of PM Modi's post

Meta apologised to the government for mistakenly taking down Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post and assured it of greater care in handling posts from verified public figures.

Social media conglomerate Meta on Wednesday formally apologised for the erroneous takedown of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video addressing students and assured the government that, going forward, the company will be “extremely careful” when dealing with posts by prominent personalities with verified accounts. 

“I apologised to the minister on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi’s post”, Joel Kaplan, the chief global affairs officer at Meta, said in a statement after his meeting with Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. 

The late afternoon tense meeting between Vaishnaw and Kaplan took place for roughly 20 minutes, during which Meta’s team also explained the reasons behind the inadvertent takedown of Modi’s video post on Facebook in which he was addressing students who were protesting the leaking of the question papers for the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET), according to sources. 

 

“They (Meta) explained that PM Modi’s post was inadvertently flagged by Meta’s internal AI (artificial intelligence) systems as a deepfake post, owing to the sudden surge in the number of visitors on the post. While it was taken down in error, the post was quickly restored,” a source who was present in the meeting said. 

An email sent to Meta seeking its response on the issues raised in the meeting did not elicit any response. 

Kaplan was accompanied by Neil Potts, the vice-president of public policy at Meta, Rafael Fr­a­n­kel, the head of Asia Pacific pu­blic policy at the firm, Aman Jain, head of public policy in In­dia, and other senior executives. 

Earlier in the day, Kaplan and his team also met the IT Ministry secretary, S Krishnan and other senior officials. The early afternoon meeting, lasted about 45 minutes, during which the ministry officials questioned Meta executives on several aspects, such as the presence of Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM), the takedown of Modi’s post, the presence and proliferation of deepfake content across various platforms of Meta, as well as the intermediary’s inaction on the issues raised by the Grievance Apellate Commitee, sources said. 

While media reports claimed that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has also apologised to the government, this could not be independenlty verified. 

“They (Meta) agreed that there had been some gaps in their automated CSAM monitoring and takedown systems and have agreed to further strengthen the number of people working on the issue. We have given them a list of issues that need to be worked on and will seek a response on the action taken in due course of time,” a senior government official, present in both the meetings, said.

 

In addition, Meta was cautioned to strengthen its internal systems to better handle paid posts and advertisements, and that it could not always claim safe harbour, especially in these situations, another official said.